


A Different Kind of Ace

by RowenaZahnrei



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Family Reunion, Friendship, Gen, Hero Identity, Identity Issues, Io - Freeform, Jealousy, Medical Experimentation, Rimmer's Family, Science Fiction, Self Confidence Issues, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, Starbug - Freeform, Time Travel, dimension hopping, identity crisis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-01 15:30:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 39,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5211098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowenaZahnrei/pseuds/RowenaZahnrei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rimmer left Starbug to become someone he liked, but he always hated Ace. Now he feels he's trapped playing a part, a failure in a shiny costume. To become a hero in his own right, Rimmer must face up to his old crew, his family, and his self-loathing...</p><p>This story is a work in progress. Your comments, reviews, and opinions would be deeply appreciated! :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Multiverse 101: A Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Red Dwarf or any of its characters. Please don't sue me or steal my story. Thanks!

A DIFFERENT KIND OF ACE  
By Rowena Zahnrei

Multiverse 101: A Prologue

Ace Rimmer flicked back a stray lock of his perfect hair and turned his cool gaze to the Sultan.

"I'm afraid the Plutonian Cybernauts aren't going to back down, your Eminence," he said, his smooth voice managing to convey warning and encouragement at the same time. "At least four thousand have gathered outside that wall, and you can bet they'll have at least twice as many more hanging over us in orbit. They want the Princess Angela, and they'll reduce this moon to rubble if they don't get her, pronto."

"But what can we do?" The little man twisted the hem of his golden robes between his pudgy fingers. "My wife was right—I never should have tried for this job. 'Play the numbers, win four years of luxury as Sultan of Io.' What was I thinking?"

"Now's not the time for second guesses, old chum. You've got to keep those spirits up. For your daughter's sake, and for the sake of your people."

"But how can I?" the Sultan cried. "There are thousands of those creatures out there, Ace, thousands! And there's only one of you."

Ace regarded the quaking little man. 

"That's as may be," the hero said, "But if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you don't need numbers to win the day. In fact, in this case, the sheer size of that Cybernautic army out there is its own Achilles heel."

"What do you mean?" the Sultan asked, a tentative, hopeful light beginning to brighten his eyes. "Are you saying you've cooked up one of those lovely planney things of yours?"

"Trust me, Sultan," Ace said, and slipped on his shades. "I'll have this problem sorted before you can say, 'Smoke me a ki—'"

"—mer! Arnold Rimmer, are you listening to me?"

Arnold Rimmer, aged thirteen and a quarter, stumbled back to reality through a haze of disorientation. He'd been so deep into his daydream, he felt as if he'd actually been standing in his imaginary Sultan's palace, ready to save the beautiful Princess Angela from a fate worse than reality TV. Now, he looked around to find himself back in boarding school surrounded by his smirking peers and fixed in the sights of his mathematics teacher's double-barreled glare.

"He's not, Mr. Nesbit," Lawrence "Stinky" Bateman piped up from the desk across from him. "He's been doodling in his notepad again."

It was true. The lined paper that should have been filled with neat lines of algebra notes instead sported a series of shaded pencil drawings depicting his imaginary hero Ace Rimmer's sleek, dimension-jumping ship, the Wildfire, speeding across the stars to meet the deadly Cybernaut space fleet. He looked up at his teacher and winced. 

"Uh…"

"Right," the teacher said, his thin face taut. "I warned you. I told you the next time I caught you slacking off in class I'd send you to the Headmaster."

Arnold blinked. 

"Sir? But I—"

"And don't even start with the excuses!" 

Mr. Nesbit pursed his lips, his posture radiating disappointment. 

Arnold lowered his eyes to his desk.

"I have given you every chance, Mr. Rimmer," the teacher said. "When your mother called to warn me about you at the beginning of the year—during my supper hour, I might add—I figured she was drunk, or exaggerating. I promised myself to give you the benefit of the doubt and judge you by your own merit. But what am I to judge? You don't do your work, you don't pay attention, you constantly drift off into these daydreams of yours. And come evaluations, you invariably have a nervous fit and get yourself sent to the nurse. How do you expect to graduate if all you ever do is slack off and make excuses?"

Arnold folded his hands and squeezed his fingers together until they hurt. 

"I don't mean to, sir," he said. "I try to pay attention, honest I do. It's just…" 

He trailed off, his face flushed with embarrassment, completely unable to admit the truth: that he found algebra incomprehensible and seeing the other boys copy down and compute the problems that the teacher set left him so bitterly angry over his own boneheaded stupidity that the only safe escape for his ego and pride was in the depths of his imagination. In fact, it had gotten to the point where, most days, Arnold slipped into a daydream the moment he sank into his chair. He told himself that he needed those daydreams, relied on them. They were the only thing in his pathetic, lonely life that gave him any sense of satisfaction or achievement.

"Good grief, Rimmer!" his teacher exclaimed.

Arnold jumped, startled out of his thoughts. 

"Sir!" 

The class snickered.

"You're doing it again! By Jupiter's spot, boy, can't you keep your mind in this reality for more than two minutes at a stretch?"

Arnold looked around uncomfortably, unsure what to say. 

Mr. Nesbit closed his eyes and rubbed the place where his glasses sat on his nose.

"Right. Out. Get out, Rimmer, out of my sight," he said with a tired sigh. "You've wasted enough of this class's time. And when you come back, please, try to have your homework done, for once. I'll ring the Headmaster and tell him you're on your way."

Arnold hung his curly-haired head and stood, slinging his book bag over his shoulder. The aisle through the desks became a walk of shame, lined on all sides by cruel, jeering smiles. Closing the classroom door behind him, he stared out into the empty, green corridor and just stood there, nostrils flaring as his anger and humiliation blended into a quiet, tentative defiance.

"What do I care," he said, his high, adolescent voice echoing against the cold, polished tiles. "It's not my fault I don't learn anything if my teachers keep sending me out of the room. Besides, what's a Space Corps Test Pilot need algebra for anyway? I want to fly the ships, not build them!"

Casting a glare over his shoulder at the classroom door, Arnold strode toward the lift that would take him to where the Headmaster waited at the top floor of the boarding school's dome.

Io House was reputed to be the best boys' school in the Outer System. It was the training ground of the crème de la crème of the colony worlds, an elitist institution that demanded the highest performance of all its students. Many boys cracked under the pressure and transferred out to government-funded schools before their third year. A school like that, that prided itself on its competitive spirit and ruthless standards of achievement, had no resources to waste on remedial education or psychological counseling. It was sink or swim, and Arnold felt like he had been holding his breath for years.

"They'll see," he muttered as the lift doors closed. "They'll all see. When I'm an officer, those pompous goits will tear each other to pieces just for the chance to shake my hand. They'll line up for miles to cheer Commander Ace Rimmer, Space Adventurer!"

To Be Continued...


	2. Chapter One

Chapter One  
Some Three Million Eight Hundred Years Later (Relative Time), in a very distant reality…

"Ace, there's thousands of those monsters out there. Thousands! And my Home Guard has already been through the wringer. We're a peaceful people, normally. We only have minimum defenses. What are we to do?"

"Fear not, Sultan," Ace replied over the comm. system, staring through his cockpit window at the dense cloud of saucers hovering over the blue-green planetoid. "If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that you don't need numbers to win the day. In fact, in this case, the sheer size of that Simulant fleet out there is its own Achilles heel."

The Sultan's quaking voice filled with hope. 

"You mean, you have a plan?"

Ace flashed the Sultan's viewer image a confident smile. 

"Worry ye not, Sultan" he said. "I'll have your daughter home safe and sound before you know it, with plenty of time left for cake and presents. Computer," he called out as he cut communications with the palace.

"Yes, Ace?" the Wildfire computer responded in her sultry voice.

"I'm transporting over to the lead ship. I'll need you to set a trap while I rescue Princess Angela."

"What would you like me to do?"

"You know those Tranq'mutanian fire-bombs we've got stashed in the back, left over from that party in Dimension 11349082?"

The computer cottoned on immediately. 

"The asteroid field!"

"Pepper the field with a few of those babies, but make sure you stay within transport range. I'll let you in on Phase Two of the plan when I get back with Princess Angela."

"Ace—" the computer started, then seemed to think better of what she was going to say. "Take care," she finished softly.

"I always do, old girl," he said affectionately. "Smoke me a kipper. You know the rest."

With those parting words, the hero activated the teleport, his photons reforming in a sweaty, humid corridor at least thirty degrees too hot for human comfort.

"Thank goodness I'm a hologram," Ace muttered to himself, and glanced down at his wrist scanner/communicator/compass watch to get a lay of the land. Clusters of Simulants glowed a sickly blue in several of the branching rooms, but they didn't concern him. Only the little red dot up ahead, trapped in what seemed to be the main airlock.

With all the speed and stealth of a highly evolved cat, Ace dashed to the airlock with barely a sound and slapped his keypad decoder over the coded doorlock. Within seconds, the decoder had run through all possible permutations and hit upon the correct numbers. Ace pulled it away and stuffed it back into his pocket as the airlock doors rolled open with a heavy, metallic sigh.

Princess Angela sat inside, strapped to a metal chair, her pale face red and puffy from sobbing into her gag. Two Simulant guards towered over her, mocking her tears and threatening her with their guns. They turned when they heard the doors unlock, and were already firing when they opened.

Ace ducked and rolled under the barrage, unholstering his guns and firing a charged tag at each guard in a single, fluid move. As the Simulants stood jittering in a fizzing fury of electrical feedback, Ace used the knife he kept strapped to his boot to cut the princess free. Hoisting the young girl into his arms, he raced a sudden flood of Simulant soldiers, who'd no doubt been alerted by the noise, back up the corridor, locked onto his ship's position, and activated his transporter just in time to see a hail of Simulant bullets pass harmlessly through their fading forms.

The pair reappeared in the cramped, one-man cockpit of the Wildfire, the disoriented princess curled up in his lap.

"There, now, Princess," he said, supporting her with his arm as she sobbed into his shoulder. "Not the best way to spend your thirteenth birthday, perhaps, but no need to fret. You're with me now, and I'm going to take you home. It'll be as if your birthday celebrations were never interrupted."

The girl looked up at him through bleary blue eyes, and Ace was slapped with a disorienting jolt of déjà vu. This girl, the Princess Angela, she looked exactly like a girl he'd known at school. Jumping from dimension to dimension, Ace had become rather used to seeing familiar faces in strange settings, but this was something different.

Angela Parker had been a student at the girls' school counterpart of his own Io House. A few times a year, the two schools would embark on joint field trips to Earth or Mars or Titan, and once…one shining, magical trip…Angela had let him, Arnold "Bonehead" Rimmer, sit next to her on the green school shuttle. Both ways, to Earth then back to Io. They hadn't talked much, but she'd smiled at him whenever he'd dared to glance her way. They'd been real smiles, too. Genuine, without a hint of the malice or disgust he was used to seeing in his peers.

There had only been that one trip, he hadn't seen her again after that. Still, Angela Parker's golden smiles had warmed his daydreams for the remainder of his childhood, where he'd often cast her as the damsel in distress to be rescued by his heroic creation, Ace Rimmer.

Now, surreal though it was to contemplate, it seemed that childhood daydream had actually come true. After all, it was basic Multiverse 101 that every possibility, every choice, every dream was played out somewhere. Hard as it had been for him to accept at first, the Ace Rimmer legend he'd dreamed up as a boy was real. He was living it. And now, a real, living incarnation of the Princess Angela was cradled in his arms. Only, she was still a child, while he had grown up a long, long time ago. Even if she had been the same Angela he'd known, he could never expect her to recognize him as the shy boy from the shuttle trip to Earth.

"We're really going home?" the girl asked, drying her eyes on the sleeve of her torn and filthy party dress. "But…but what about…" 

She stared out the viewscreen at the fleet of Simulant saucers.

"Ah, yes. Phase Two," Ace said, shaking off the bittersweet memories of a lonely boy, long gone, and turning his concentration to the task at hand. "Computer!"

"Here, Ace. I scattered the fire-bombs as you asked."

"Excellent." Ace smiled. "Now comes the fun part."

The princess shifted on his lap so she could see the controls. 

"Are you going to blow up the Simulants?" she asked.

"That's up to them," Ace replied. "The trick is to get them angry enough to chase us blindly. Then, we manipulate the fire-bombs."

"How are you going to do that?" the princess asked.

Ace smiled at her. 

"Strategy, my dear princess. Always know your enemy. Computer, open a channel to the lead ship."

"Channel open, Ace," the computer replied.

"This is Ace Rimmer calling the Simulant leader," the hero said in his smooth, confident tone. "I have rescued the Princess Angela, and I warn you now, unless you leave this system, never to return, I shall personally see each and every one of you destroyed."

A crackle of static burst from the viewer, fading to the image of a gray-faced Simulant warrior scowling up from the screen. His expression was made all the fiercer by his pointed brown teeth and the red optic lens glaring out from the ragged hole where his left eye should have been.

"Ace Rimmer," he ground out with a voice like rusty gears. "I'd know that arrogance anywhere."

"It's not arrogance if I can pull off what I promise. And I promise, if you go near that planetoid again, I'll—"

"He'll blow you out of space, you metal-hearted monsters!" the princess shouted. "He's got a plan that will—mmMMmm!"

"Shh, that's enough, Princess," Ace hissed, his hand clamped over her mouth. "While I appreciate your enthusiasm, we don't want to give away the whole strategy, now do we?"

Princess Angela nodded and stopped struggling, but he needn't have worried. The moment the Simulant leader caught a glimpse of the princess, he shouted, "He has our prisoner! After him! All of you, after him now!"

"Heh, will you look at that. Good job, Princess. The entire Simulant fleet is on the move. Computer," he said. "To the asteroid field! Let's give those cyborg bastards a chase they won't soon forget."

"Yes!" the princess cheered, and wrapped her arms around his neck. The Rimmer in him froze in surprise, but Ace just chucked warmly and said, "I'm going to need both arms now if this is going to work. I know it's tight quarters, but if you could just scoot to the left a bit…"

"Yeah, of course," the girl said, and slid her small frame off his lap to crouch in the narrow space just behind his chair. "Ace, when you're ready, could I push the button?"

"Princess?"

"To blow up the Simulants! They wrecked my birthday party, destroyed my pool, wiped out my Dad's army, and nearly tossed me out an airlock! If they're going to die, I want them to know I pushed the button!"

"Princess, there isn't any button," Ace said. "The fire-bombs are activated by proximity—as soon as the Simulant ships get close enough, they'll go off all on their own. What I'm doing is programming the shape of the explosions."

"Shape?"

"Fire-bombs are essentially high-powered fireworks," Ace explained. "When they go off, they can take any shape you like."

"What shape are you programming, then?" she asked eagerly. "Space stingrays? Fire-breathing toads?"

As the Wildfire's auto pilot cleared the far side of the asteroid field, Ace typed in the last of his instructions and hit 'enter'. Sitting back in his chair, he said, "Now, we watch the show."

The Simulant fleet had spread out as it entered the field, clearly aiming to surround the Wildfire. As the rear guard passed the first few rocks, the front guard encountered a startling surprise. A flaming orange battleship, twice the size of a Simulant saucer, flared up before them. Another ship appeared toward the middle, then another, then another, hemming the Simulants into a dangerously tight cluster. As the insubstantial battleships began to fizz and sputter deadly sparks and cinders, the Simulants tried to mount an attack, only to see their torpedoes and lasers pass through the ships and hit the Simulant saucers on the other side. Frustrated, several tried to ram the ships, and ended up as craters on the craggy face of an asteroid. Within minutes, the pointless assault had reduced most of the fleet to flaming debris. Then, as a glorious finale, the fiery battleships zipped toward the center of the remaining fleet, leaving glimmering trails behind them as they collided in a spectacular light show of reds and greens, oranges and yellows and blues and purples. The Simulants scattered, only to meet up with giant rocks and spinning chunks of wrecked saucers. For a moment, just before the lead ship was smashed into asteroid pizza, the viewer in Ace's cockpit sputtered with static. Then, space was silent once more.

"Well, Princess?" Ace asked as he set them on a course back to her homeworld. "What did you think?"

"Wow," she breathed, her eyes wide and her jaw slack. "And you didn't have to fire a shot! You just basically set up the fireworks and let the Simulants destroy themselves!"

"The Wildfire isn't a war ship, Princess," Ace said. "But Simulants only think in terms of war, of offense and defense. If they feel their back's up against a wall, they have to fight. Under normal circumstances, those fireworks would barely have registered against the Simulants' defensive shields. But throw in an asteroid field and an apparent advance from an unidentified alien battle fleet, and poof! Instant recipe for a Simulant barbeque."

"You are so clever," the princess sighed, climbing back onto his lap. "When I grow up, I want to be just like you!"

Rimmer blinked. 

"What, really?" 

He cleared his throat, realizing she meant Ace. 

"Yes, well, first we need to get you back to your dad. Can't have much of a birthday party without the birthday girl, now can you?"

"Will you come to my party, Ace?" she asked. "Please? I want all my friends to meet you, and then we can tell them about the Simulants and the fireworks and—"

"Princess Angela," Ace said kindly, "I thank you for your invitation. But, you see, now you're safe and the Simulants are gone, my work here is done. There are a billion other realities out there. A billion other people who need my help. And I have to go to them. Do you understand, Princess?"

The princess nodded and rested her head against his shoulder. 

"But don't you ever get a break?" she asked.

"Can't afford it," he said. "When you have a reputation like mine, there's always someone out there to challenge it. Every time you think you can relax, trouble always has a way of finding you. That's why I can't stay in any one place too long. Instead of being a protector, I'd end up drawing danger to the people I care about. Ah—here we are: the royal palace. I'll just take her down on that cricket pitch, and then we'll have to say good bye."

"It isn't fair, Ace," the princess said as he initiated a manual landing sequence. "Someone as good as you should be happy. But you're not, are you." 

She sighed and snuggled even closer into his arms. 

"I think you must be the loneliest man in the galaxy."

"Princess…"

"I could come with you," she said, sitting up to look him in the eye. "I could be your daughter, and we could roam the multiverse together, and then you wouldn't have to be lonely, and I—"

"Princess, your father is outside," Ace said gently, pushing the button to raise the roof of the cockpit. "He's waiting for you."

The girl's expression flickered, caught between her fantasy and encroaching reality. For a moment, Ace felt like a boy again, watching Angela Parker join her parents at the far side of the shuttle lot at the end of the trip. Even then, he'd known he'd never see her smile again.

Leaning forward, he placed a soft kiss on the princess's forehead, then helped her down from the cockpit and into her father's waiting arms.

"Oh, Angela, my darling girl!" the Sultan sobbed as he hugged her close. "Oh, thank the heavens you're safe! Ace— Ace Rimmer, how can I ever repay you. You've saved our world, and restored my kingdom's greatest treasure."

"Happy to do it, your Eminence," Ace replied from the cockpit. "You have quite a girl, there. Perceptive, quick witted…" He smiled. "I wish you all the best."

The Sultan's eyes widened. 

"You're not leaving, Ace? Not so soon? I've organized a parade and a banquet—"

"Sounds like a marvelous way to celebrate your daughter's birthday. Set off a few fireworks for me, yeah?"

Princess Angela smiled at that, as he'd hoped she would. With that image locked in his memory, Ace lowered the cockpit's roof and snapped the Sultan and his daughter a sharp salute, lifting off to their shouts of "Good-bye, Ace! Thank you!"

As the Wildfire cleared the planetoid's atmosphere, Princess Angela sighed, and her smile turned bittersweet. 

"What a guy."

To Be Continued...


	3. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Back in the black wastes of space, Arnold Rimmer pulled off his wig and rubbed the smooth center of his forehead, where the metallic H that had marked his hologrammatic status had once protruded.

"Ace?" the computer prodded. "Ace, are you all right?"

"Don't call me that, Computer," Rimmer said through a scowl. "Not when we're alone."

"Oh, Arnold, not another sulk," said the computer. "Why are you being like this? You've been Ace for five years now—"

"Two," he corrected. "The first three were training. Training that you said shouldn't have taken more than a few months, if you remember."

"—and you've done a darn fine job carrying on the flame," the computer continued in a firm voice. "I don't understand this thing inside you that can never accept success, especially after such a clever victory."

Rimmer didn't acknowledge her words. He just turned his eyes to the window, staring out at nothing in particular. 

"That girl was right, you know. The Princess Angela," he said. "I'm not happy. I suppose I should be…successful mission and all that… But, to tell the truth, I'm sick of it. Sick of the act, sick of the costume, sick of the stupid butch voice." He scowled. "Just because the first Ace smoked two packs of those little girly cigars a day and dressed up in a shiny flight suit that made him look like a foil-wrapped potato, why should I have to suffer for it?"

"Arnie—"

"No, I mean it!" Rimmer said. "If it really is my destiny to do this hero lark day after day, year after year, why can't I ever do it as myself? Why does the credit for all my hard work always have to go to boost the reputation of that dead git? Why?"

"Arnie, I've told you time and again," the computer said patiently. "You do get the credit. His reputation, his legend, is yours too. You are Ace Rimmer. You've earned the name a hundred times over, and then some."

"That's just it, though," Rimmer protested. "I may be doing his job, even doing it well, but that doesn't make me Ace. I hated Ace. Even now, I can't stand the thought of his smug face, that conceited, self-satisfied, overachieving bastard. Did I tell you about the first time we met? He just burst on the scene with his broken arm and perfect hair and started making assumptions. I was still in my soft-light form then, but he kept prattling on, making demands as if that didn't even matter. I ask you, how could I be expected to bring that simpering mechanoid Kryten back online when I couldn't even touch the doorframe without my hand passing through it? And all those engine performance questions he kept hurling at me—for all he knew I'd been the ship's cook! Dancing around Starbug's hold with Lister as if he were the host of a kids' TV show..." 

Rimmer shook his head in disgust. 

"Everyone seems to forget: if Saint Ace hadn't lost control after his first dimension jump and crashed into our ship, we never would have needed his smegging help in the first place."

"Look, you said it yourself, Arnold," the computer said. "That Ace is dead. He's gone, and so is the Ace that came before you."

"You mean James-smegging-Bond," Rimmer muttered. "The man who shagged his way across eighty-six dimensions before catching a Nazi bullet with his lightbee."

"I mean, there's no point complaining about them. The job is yours now and, despite a few rocky patches to begin with, you've done spectacularly so far. In fact, you're one of only three Ace Rimmers who ever bothered to learn how to pilot this ship manually, without any backup from me. That makes you a genuine flying ace, at least in my book. "

"It's just not good enough, Computer," Rimmer insisted, making her wonder if he'd even heard her words. "Ace may be physically dead, but his legend lives on, bigger than us all. And no matter how many times you go on about 'taking up the flame' and 'the great relay race,' the bare, basic truth of the matter is that I'm not Ace. I'm an actor playing Ace. When my predecessor died, he handed me the costume and the role and you taught me the lines and the moves. But I didn't earn that name, or his rank of commander. I never made it to Space Corps Special Services. I'm just a private, a lowly Second Technician, all scrunched up and hiding behind a much grander character. And now, no matter what I do, no matter how heroic or selfless or stupid or whatever… It's not me that gets the credit, it's the legend. And if I screw up, the legend makes up for it."

He shook his head, his features pinched and his gaze light years away. 

"My whole life I've had to live in the shadow of someone else: my brothers, my mother—even myself! Back on Red Dwarf, when Holly activated my hologram to keep Lister sane, I knew I wasn't the same man I'd been. Arnold Rimmer was dead. I was just his ghost, a computer generated holographically simulated personality inspired by a detailed brain scan of the original. Over the years, I struggled with the knowledge that I was filling a dead man's shoes. And now, I'm doing it again, aren't I? Only here, I can never let up, never be myself.

"I ask you, Computer, how can I be a hero, a role model for kids like Angela, if I can't even step out of this ship without wearing this smegging costume!"

The computer made a noise rather like an electronic groan. He was so difficult when he got like this! Most of the other Rimmers had had their hang ups, but when this one got into a slump, the bitterness and low self-esteem that had been a fundamental aspect of his psychological make-up for so many years came pouring out of him like sewage from a freshly unblocked drainage pipe. 

"Arnold, listen—"

"No, I'm through listening. I told you, I'm sick of it! Sick of the stupid James Bond voice, sick of the ridiculous floppy wig, sick of the BacoFoil flight jacket. Sick of the women swooning for a man they think I am. Not for me. Never for me. I've had enough of the pretense. If I can't earn a reputation on my own, I don't want to be lumbered dragging his around."

The computer sighed. 

"None of the other Aces were ever like you. They reveled in the Ace persona."

"Yeah, well... Maybe that's what comes from all those years of being a hideous failure. Now I've finally tasted some success… I feel I want to achieve something, really achieve something, that I can call my own."

"But you have," the computer insisted. "For years now, you've owned this role. Those experiences, those triumphs, they were all yours. The name doesn't matter."

"Doesn't it?" Rimmer scoffed. "Those people out there WANT a flashy, overbearing, fatheaded hero to swoop out of the sky and fix their problems for them. They have all these overblown expectations of what Ace is SUPPOSED to be. But, what no one seems to realize is that it's not a game, this life. It's not some childish doodle in an algebra notebook. It's real. It involves real people and real consequences. And here's me in my tin foil costume, putting on that macho voice and asking desperate people in mortal peril to trust me. No, not to trust ME. To trust the legend." 

He shook his head in shame. 

"It's a travesty. A con."

"Arnie, don't let's start this—"

"All my life, I've been a failure."

"And here it comes." The computer sighed tiredly.

"Even as a child, the very thought of Arnold J. Rimmer made me cringe. I used to disappear into my imagination for days at a time, dreaming I was someone else. Someone worthwhile. Well, now I am that someone, but not as myself, no, only as a prop for something grander, a link in an endless chain. It's like some bad cosmic joke," he said. "I get to be the hero I always imagined, but only by assuming the name and reputation of another man. By living a lie." 

He shook his head.

"The way I see it, if I can't prove myself a hero AS myself, without the Ace legend hanging over me, I might as well pack it in and head back to Starbug. The old posse may have been a pack of cretinous, inept space bums, but at least I didn't have to pretend with them. I mean, yes, Lister was a fetid slob with the personal hygiene of a diarrhetic seagull, but deep, deep down, buried somewhere far beneath all his irritating, disgusting habits and traits, he was, at heart, an honest man. And it's taken me all these years to realize that, somehow, somewhere along the line, a bit of that honesty must have rubbed off on me." 

He made a face. 

"I always said that little gimboid was contagious."

"So, is that what you want, then?" the computer asked. "To face danger alone, without Ace's reputation to back you up?"

Rimmer's bitter expression slackened at that. 

"Well, no. Not exactly," he said. "It's just…"

"Look, I think I understand, Arnold." The computer's tone gentled. "You've come a long way these past five years, but when it comes down to it, you've never actually faced up to your own demons. And, until you do, you will always feel unworthy of your place as Ace."

Rimmer straightened. 

"I never said I was unworthy—!"

"Arnold," the computer interrupted. "I think it's time—oh my…"

"Computer?" Rimmer said, leaning forward in concern. "Are you OK?"

"I… I'm not sure. I feel…rather spaced. You don't think I could have picked up a virus…?"

Rimmer paled, his own issues sluiced aside as he suddenly remembered that flash of static on the viewer, just before the lead Simulant ship had exploded. His fingers flew over the controls, scanning the computer's mainframe. 

"A virus. A Simulant virus… Oh smeg, please, don't let it be that..."

"Arnold?" The computer's voice sounded weak and frightened. "I—I can't see. I think…my sensors…"

"Don't worry, Computer," Rimmer said, already hard at work using the control panel to work out a set of multidimensional coordinates and a flight plan. "I'll get you out of this."

"Do you know what it is?"

Rimmer bit his lip. 

"It's all right, Computer. I've seen this before," he said, struggling to keep his voice calm and reassuring. "It's called the Armageddon Virus: a nasty bit of tainted code the Simulants like to transmit to attacking vessels just before they get blown across the bridge to Silicon Hell."

"The Armageddon Virus! But, Arnold…"

"I know they say it's terminal, but trust me, there is a way to cure it. If we can just make the jump…"

Reality swirled and bent around them as Rimmer input the course instructions and piloted the ship to the one reality where he knew there was an antidote for the Armageddon Virus. He only hoped the virus his Starbug had contracted all those years ago was similar enough to the virus infecting the Wildfire computer for Kryten's Dove Program to work.

To Be Continued...


	4. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The jump ended in a sickening lurch and Rimmer straightened at once, scanning the space around the ship for any sign of life. A relieved smile twisted his lips as his eyes fell on a small, green craft chugging doggedly through the star-studded blackness ahead.

"Well, Computer we made it. My home dimension," he said. "And, unlike two previous Aces I could mention, I got us here without all the near-collision dramatics." 

His expression changed as he looked back at the craft outside, the smugness fading to be replaced by something more pensive. 

"Looks like I'm heading back to Starbug after all."

"You really believe there's something there that can help me?" the computer asked weakly.

"I'm counting on it," Rimmer said. "Costume and silly voice be damned; without you, Computer, there is no Ace Rimmer."

"Please hurry, Arnie. I don't know how much longer…" Her voice ended in a sort of hiccup.

"Don't worry, Computer, I've switched the controls entirely to manual," he said gently. "Why don't you offline for a bit, save your runtime? I'll contact the 'Bug and purge this virus quicker than a bulimic cheetah at a Roman banquet."

"I know I can count on you, Arnie," she whispered.

A moment later, all power on the ship went out, save for communications and minimal thrusters. Holograms didn't need life support, and Rimmer had long ago upgraded his hardlight drive to be both self-sustaining and self-charging, so the hologram simulator was offline too.

Rimmer tapped his finger against the comm. button, but before he could press it, a fist of trepidation grabbed hold of his abdominals and squeezed. It had been five years since he'd last seen Lister, Kryten, and the Cat. Five years since his old bunkmate had snared him into assuming the persona of his dying predecessor.

What would they think of him? Would they even know it was him? He didn't think he could handle playing the role in front of his old crew—particularly not in front of Lister, who knew the truth. It had felt strange then, and it would be even more awkward now.

But no, Lister had probably told them. He couldn't have kept a story like that buried under his leather deerstalker for five years. The real worry was, would they view his stint as Ace in the same light he, himself did, jeering at the inept fool beneath the wig and costume? Would they welcome him home? Or had they been all too glad to see the back of him?

"You're wasting time, you fetid smegbrain," he muttered to himself. "What does it matter what those morons think of you? The Wildfire is dying. Just push the smegging button and be done with it!"

His finger sank down, the button clicked, and the viewscreen fizzed to sudden life. It was only then that he remembered he wasn't wearing Ace's wig.

"Smeg!" he hissed under his breath. But it was too late to search the cockpit. Starbug had already responded to his hail.

"Ri—Rimmer? Oh my God, Rimmer, is that you?"

"'Fraid so, Listy," he said, and was surprised by a sudden powerful inclination to break into a broad smile. It wasn't that he was happy to see the little gerbil, he told himself. It was just, there was something oddly reassuring in knowing that this was the Lister from his universe, the one he'd served with before he'd died, and not some alternate from a different timeline.

"But—but what are you doin' here, man?" Lister asked in his Liverpool drawl. "I thought you were off bein' Ace!"

"I am! That is…" 

Enough of this, Rimmer thought to himself. Time to cut to the chase. 

"Look, Lister, I need your help. I had a bit of a scrape with a Simulant battle fleet a few dimensions back, and it looks like the Wildfire's contracted a version of the Armageddon Virus. Does Kryten still have that Dove Program saved?"

"Hold on, I'll ask him," Lister said. "He's just in the back, doin' the ironin'. Meanwhile, you're welcome to dock here, on Starbug. I'm sure the others'll be glad to see ya."

Rimmer couldn't stop himself from asking, "Glad to see 'me'? Or Ace?"

Lister averted his eyes. Rimmer's gut gave a sinking lurch.

"I don't believe it," Rimmer said. "You didn't tell them, did you. They still think I'm dead, don't they? And now I suppose you expect me to put on that ridiculous wig and prance around pretending to be that pompous goit?"

"But I thought you were that pompous goit! I mean—" Lister's expression narrowed. "You did do it, didn't you? You did become Ace?"

"Of course I did, you feckless gimboid. But that doesn't mean I want to have to play him all the time. I thought, at least in my own reality, I could drop the act for a few hours."

Lister seemed to chew on that. 

"Yeah," he said. "OK, I'll tell them you're coming. And, uh, Rimmer…"

"What?"

"It's, uh…" He cleared his throat. "It's good to see you, man."

Rimmer swallowed, an unexpected lump lodging just above his Adam's apple. 

"Uh…yeah," he coughed. "Yeah. I'll just…" He gestured at the controls.

"Right," Lister said. "See you in a tick, then."

Lister's image faded and Rimmer let out a long breath. So, Kryten and the Cat still thought he was his predecessor. He could just imagine their faces when Lister told them the truth: the shock, the denial, the snide remarks at his expense. They probably wouldn't believe a word of his adventures. Gits.

Well, he'd show them. He may not 'be' Ace, but he had been out in the multiverse for five years doing Ace's job. He wasn't the same self-defeating, petty-minded wreck of a man he'd been before. He'd helped people, saved lives, toppled dictators.

His anxiety trickled to the background as his ego began to inflate. This was his chance to prove how far he'd come, not as Ace, but as himself; to finally win the respect of his three closest acquaintances. He'd left them Arnold Rimmer, Second Technician Nobody. He'd return Arnold Rimmer, Second Technician Somebody.

Looking down at his shiny silver flight suit, he made a face and fished his light bee remote from his pocket. After a momentary debate, he deftly swapped Ace's flame retardant tin foil space jacket and trousers for an outfit he'd always longed to try, but which the Wildfire computer had repeatedly told him wouldn't fit the legend's flashy, futuristic space-hero image: the classic leather jacket, beige scarf, tan trousers, and high black boots of a 23rd Century Space Corps flying ace. It was a perfect match for the garb young Rimmer used to envy his eldest brother, John, on his rare visits home from the Space Corps testing base on Mars; the very uniform, in fact, that had inspired his boyhood fantasies about the adventures of Ace Rimmer to begin with. Peering at the darkened viewer screen, he watched his reflection's lips turn up in a satisfied smile. This was his Ace. This was the man he'd always dreamed he'd become.

Quickly smoothing his short, neatly parted curls—which had gotten a little flattened by Ace's wig—Rimmer linked with Starbug's automatic docking system and eased the Wildfire to a gentle landing, ready to greet his old crew.

The Cat, Kryten, and Lister rushed in the moment the landing bay repressurized, just in time to meet Rimmer's grin as he jumped down from the cockpit, his boots hitting the floor's metal grating with a solid clang.

Kryten stopped short, his expression shifting from neutral to reverse. 

"Mr. Ace, sir...?"

"Hey, Ace buddy!" the Cat cried happily, his pointed incisors gleaming in the artificial light. Then, his features collided in confusion, jolting his nose into a wrinkle of disappointment. "Wait, what happened to your hair? And your flashy suit! You used to look so dangerous, man! Now, you look like old toilet brush head, only dressed up in some dull, old fashioned uniform!"

Cat's words hit Rimmer's pride like a sock to the gut with brass knuckles. Rimmer stared at them both, speechless, then shot Lister a murderous look.

"I thought you said you'd explain things to them!"

"I tried, man," Lister protested, revealing a fresh lager stain on the graying t-shirt he wore under his heavily patched black jacket. "But as soon as I said 'Ace,' they both came runnin' so fast, I didn't get a chance to finish. Guess you can't blame 'em if they're jus' a little disappointed."

"A little disappointed...?" Rimmer squidged up his face like a fist, his teeth pressed together so hard it was amazing they didn't crack. 

This wasn't what he'd imagined. It's what he should have expected, knowing the cruel, shallow, heartless creatures they all were, but he'd dreamed of his homecoming so many times over the years—of the admiration, the respect, the eagerness to hear of his adventures—and it wasn't supposed to be like this. His return wasn't supposed to be an anticlimax.

"No, right," he said, his facial muscles relaxing but his voice still tight. "Of course you can't. Who wouldn't race to bask in the presence of that over-inflated windbag. I'm sure if you had explained to them that it was only me, the only way I'd have caught a glimpse of any of you would have been to run a scan for life forms and track you down myself."

"Wait, I'm confused," said the Cat. "Why is Ace talking like Goal Post Head?"

"Perhaps, Monsieur Chat," Rimmer snapped, "it's because I am 'Goal Post Head.' Yes, that's right, Kryten, and you can push your optic sensors back into your rubber-tipped head. Like it or lump it, your old hologrammatic crewmate is alive and well and, more than that, I'm a success. In fact, I wouldn't be here now, except the old dimension hopper's come down with a bit of a bug. So, if Kryten could just hand over the code for the Dove Program antidote to the Armageddon Virus, I'll be on my way and out of your hair for good."

Lister blinked. 

"You mean, you're not stayin'?"

"Why? Should I?" Rimmer retorted archly.

Lister seemed to sink into his jacket. 

"It's just, I thought…"

Rimmer deflated a little. The Cat's reaction to his uniform had completely shattered his confidence, bringing all his snarky old defenses to the fore, but Lister's manner took him rather off guard. Before he could say anything, Kryten snapped out of stare-mode.

"Oh my goodness, sir, is it true? Are you really Mr. Rimmer?"

"Yes, of course I'm me, Kryten," Rimmer said. "I took over from Ace five years ago. That was his charred lightbee you lot shot off into space, not mine."

"Wait, five years?" Lister said. "Did you say you've been gone, bein' Ace, for five years?"

Rimmer shrugged. 

"Well, three of those were training, but on the whole, yes. Why? What's it matter?"

Lister, Kryten, and the Cat shared a long look.

"Well, sir, you only left Starbug five months ago."

"Yeah, buddy," the Cat added. "Your scent hasn't even completely gone from your seat in the cockpit. Every time I walk by, I get a blast of hard-light hologram right in the olfactory glands. It's like a cross between the microwave and the structural integrity field."

Rimmer stared, rather disconcerted by Cat's description of his scent. Although he was quite aware he was, essentially, an electronic life form, he'd never stopped thinking of himself as a human being.

"Yes, well, that's only natural," he said, covering up his discomfort. "Time moves at different rates in different dimensions. I've been gone for five years, relative time."

"You mean, you've been off visiting your relatives?" the Cat asked in confusion.

Rimmer rolled his eyes. 

"No, tuna brain. Relative time. Eigenzeit. The individual perception of time that can vary according to speed and perspective and which dimension you're in. Einstein explained it in his theory of relativity."

Lister stepped back. 

"Wait, are you telling me you understand the theory of relativity?"

"Don't look too shocked, will you," Rimmer said coldly. "I'm not like an expert or anything. But anyone who hops through space and time for a living should be familiar with at least the basic concepts. Now, Kryten, I'm sorry to whinge on about this, but I really do need that code. I got the Wildfire computer to offline, but she doesn't have long. If she succumbs to that virus, I'll be stuck here. For good."

"We wouldn't want that," Lister said, and Rimmer was surprised to hear the bitter sarcasm in his voice.

"What's with you?" he asked. "I thought you wanted me to leave here and be Ace. You were the one who goaded me into it all those years ago. If you hadn't—" He trailed off, not sure he wanted to admit his mixed feelings in front of the Cat and Kryten. "Oh, never mind. Kryten, do you have the code?"

"I do, sir, but—"

"Then come on up to the cockpit with me. I'll show you where everything is."

To Be Continued...


	5. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

In order to transfer the Dove Program antidote to the Wildfire computer, Kryten had to link his own brain with the ship's mainframe and run a detailed virus scan to identify any deviations or anomalies that would inhibit the program's effectiveness. Then working through his direct link-up, he would upload the program and activate the code, all the time hoping his firewall program would keep him insulated from infection.

"How long do you reckon this'll take, Kryten?" Mr. Rimmer had asked.

"No more than forty-five minutes, sir," the mechanoid had replied.

Mr. Rimmer had seemed impatient, even a little concerned, but he'd nodded and, once he'd shown Kryten the correct port for the hook-up, he'd left the docking bay and disappeared down the corridor.

Kryten was glad he'd gone. Mr. Rimmer had always been a tidy man. His finicky neatness had bordered on obsessive compulsive. The cockpit here was like a demonstration of that. It was spotless: the dashboard lovingly polished, the seat-tilt control well oiled. There wasn't so much as a dust bunny or a fleck of tobacco ash under the seat for Kryten to hoover up. To make matters worse, as a hologram Mr. Rimmer had been incapable of producing any of the entropic mess most organic life forms couldn't help but leave in their wake: food-encrusted dishes, malodorous laundry, backed-up toilets, filmy soap-scum-covered showers. All he'd ever done, for as long as Kryten had known him, was whine and complain about Mr. Lister being the kind of slobby, feckless human that made a cleaning droid's mechanical life worthwhile, the pompous, farty little smee-hee.

"Kryten?"

The mechanoid nearly jumped out of his artificial skin. That had been a woman's voice, a low, sultry whisper right his ear.

"Yipe! Who said that?"

"It's me. The Wildfire."

Kryten felt foolish. 

"Why are you whispering?"

"Is he gone?"

"Who? Mr. Rimmer? Yes, he left several minutes ago."

"Good," the computer said, and suddenly the entire cockpit came on-line. Kryten stared in confusion.

"But, how—? I thought—"

"That I'd contracted the Armageddon Virus?" the computer's voice was smug. "I did. I've had it several times, to tell the truth."

"And you survived intact?"

"I'm a state-of-the-art Space Corps Special Services prototype, Kryten, not a clapped out mining transport vessel," she pointed out. "Also, I was fortunate that one of my Aces was a software engineer in his previous life...and let me tell you, if you think your Arnie is anal, keeping his underwear on coat hangers and working out a balanced rotation schedule for his shoe trees, this guy was infinitely worse. His finicky, superstitious habits drove me utterly mad. But he had the perfect mind for that kind of precise, persnickety work and his upgrades saved my life. Since then, my anti-virus software has been able to deal with pretty much anything the multiverse has thrown at me."

"So, you just pretended to be shutting down? Why?"

"So Ace would come here. Kryten, he needs your help. Yours and the Cat's and Lister's. Especially Lister's."

"What do you…? Hold on." Kryten checked his head was on tight. "You mean it's true? Mr. Rimmer—our Mr. Rimmer... He actually became Ace?"

"Of course it's true. He's one of the best I've trained. Earnest, responsible—"

"No," Kryten shook his head in denial.

"—and unlike so many of the others who just wanted to play 'Casanova the Sexy Action Hero,' this Ace actually gets the big picture," she insisted. "He understands that taking up this life is accepting an obligation to others. It's not a game for him to enjoy. He's told me often that this kind of responsibility, this kind of recognition is what he'd always dreamt of. But he's miserable, Kryten. His mind is full of deeply embedded emotional blocks that continually prevent him from reaching his true potential. He lashes out against success like a petulant child, and it's dragging him down."

"Yes, that sounds like our Mr. Rimmer," Kryten acknowledged. "But, what can we do? He's always been like that. It's a result of his upbringing, of his failure to achieve even one of his myriad unrealistic life goals, of his—"

"I know my Aces, Kryten," the computer cut him off. "Every one of them has had hang ups of one sort or another. But of all the Aces I've trained, your Arnie's issues are by far the closest to the original."

"Um, pardon my rather blunt refutation of your assessment, but Mr. Ace and Mr. Rimmer are nothing alike," Kryten stated. "The original Ace was a kind, confident, giving man. Mr. Rimmer is a petty, cowardly, immature, self-serving—"

"Double. They're two sides of the same coin," the computer said. "Or, to use a closer metaphor, twin trunks from the same acorn. Their lives diverged only following a single choice made during their shared childhood. If you view the multiverse like a tree, the other Aces were all branches off of other branches, but not these two. Up until that one choice was made, Ace and Arnie were a single stem growing from the same seed."

"I don't understand," Kryten said. "What terrible event could possibly have caused such a dramatic split?"

"At age seven, Ace was kept down a year at school, but not Arnie. Your Arnie's mother seduced, then blackmailed the headmaster to get him to advance the boy with the rest of his class—and she never let Arnold forget the debt he owed her for coming to his 'rescue.' That was fine for her ego: she owned the headmaster and she didn't have to live with the public embarrassment of having a son who'd been kept down. But Arnie floundered badly. Unable to keep up with his classmates, and with no support structure at home, he fell into the habit of making excuses for his failures, living in his daydreams rather than applying his mind to his schoolwork or learning how to socialize with his peers."

Kryten nodded slowly. 

"That explains so much. And Mr. Ace?"

"Ace's mother also seduced the headmaster, but her attempt at blackmail backfired, and she took it badly, ultimately becoming less of an overbearing force in her son's life. For his part, Ace recognized he'd been given a second chance. The humiliation of having to repeat a year was nearly unbearable, but he buckled down, learned to ask questions, to take part in the lessons. He learned to fight back, but not to like himself."

"Extraordinary," Kryten said. "Then, that implies Mr. Ace escaped Mr. Rimmer's spiral into failure, but not in time to avoid his own self-loathing beast."

"My Ace and your Arnie were more alike than either of them could bear to admit," the computer said. "Seeing each other for the first time came as a real blow. They were inverse copies, each wearing the other's hidden self on his sleeve. My Ace saw the sensitive man cripplingly entwined in the defenses and neuroses of a lifetime. Your Arnie saw the lonely, isolated man at Ace's core. All secrets were bared. And they took it hard."

"And that resentment is what's keeping Mr. Rimmer from achieving his potential, as you put it?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that I'm afraid, Kryten," the computer said. "It's a question of self-worth. Ace was undeniably successful in his career, but deep down, he felt inadequate. He feared his decision to indulge his love for flying made him selfish, even immature. That's another area where Ace and Arnie were alike. At heart, they both carried the same drive: to be someone they liked, who was worthy of being liked by others. Ace was never able to capture that sense, which was why he gave so much of himself, why he never formed lasting relationships, why he jumped at the chance to test pilot a dimension-hopping prototype even though, back then, it meant he'd never be able to go home again. Your Arnie's the same only, where Ace's longing to be worthwhile made him pour his heart into everything he did, Arnie built walls, keeping his true heart locked tight behind a fortress of psychological defenses."

Kryten nodded, understanding at last. 

"I see the problem," he said. "But at the risk of seeming slower than a dial-up modem, I'm afraid I still fail to see what we can do for him. If five years of acting the hero hasn't staunched Mr. Rimmer's self-loathing, how would returning to Starbug make any difference? He wasn't exactly Mr. Popularity among the crew."

"It was a risk, I'll admit it," the Wildfire said. "Arnie's in a fragile place right now. A push in the wrong direction could crush his ego entirely. But, although you shared a rather dysfunctional relationship, there's no denying that you three matter to him. You matter a great deal more than he'll admit, even to me. If he can prove himself a proper hero to you, together Lister, you, and the Cat hold enough influence over his psyche to induce him into finally accepting himself as the worthwhile man I know he can be. But, it won't be easy. For any of you."

Kryten looked wary. 

"What do you have in mind?"

"If Arnie's ever to accept his place as Ace, he'll have to believe it all came from him. So, when in doubt, stick with the basics," she said. "In this case, the classic motif that heroes are forged, not grown. I can drive him to the swordsmith's shop, but I can't make him step inside. That's where you come in. His crewmates, his companions. You can walk in with him, give him the encouragement he needs to face down the flames. Are you with me, Kryten?"

"Well, I…"

"Kryten?" she pressed.

"I suppose," the mechanoid winced, still unsure that any of this was possible.

"Good," said the computer. "Now, listen closely…"

*******

Lister sat at the table in the common room, watching Rimmer browse through the stack of classic car magazines that had been functioning as a prop for a lopsided shelf. He looked so different in that flight outfit. Taller, his chest and shoulders broader. Even his short curls seemed less like something he'd seen Kryten pull out of the Cat's shower drain and more, well, styled. One might almost call him…dare he say it…handsome.

But he was still Rimmer. If his snidy voice hadn't proved it in the docking bay, the way his nostrils flared as he scanned through the articles was a dead give-away. So much had changed on Starbug in the past few months, Lister found it comfortably reassuring to know his former bunkmate was still the same abrasively irritating smeghead he'd always known. It brought a sense of home, of a return to normalcy that hadn't been present since Rimmer left.

"So, what's it like?" he asked.

"What's what like?" Rimmer responded without looking up.

"You know," Lister said. "Bein' Ace. Livin' the life of a hero?"

Rimmer jammed the magazine he was holding back under the shelf and sank into the opposite seat, somewhat gratified that Lister was showing some curiosity at last.

"It's fine, Lister," he said. "Nothing like I thought it'd be. The people out there…they really rely on you. They trust you to know just the right thing, do just the right thing to keep them safe from the monsters of the universe. There's never a time out, you always have to be at the top of your game."

"And you've been all right with that?"

"Just ask the Wildfire's computer," he said with a very slight smile. "She'll give you a glowing report of my adventures…when she's feeling better."

Lister shook his head with a snort. 

"I just can't believe it, man."

"What?"

"You," he said. "That you did it. Became a hero. I mean, you couldn't even keep the Space Corps directives straight." He rested his elbow on the table and leaned forward, conspiratorially. "Come on, man, it's just us here. Why don't you admit the truth?"

Rimmer seemed genuinely confused. 

"What truth?"

"The truth that you sucked as Ace and you want to come back to Starbug with us. I'll understand, truly."

Rimmer's expression opened wide for a moment, then clamped down tight.

"You don't believe me. You don't believe I've succeeded as Ace."

"Well, how can I?" Lister retorted. "I mean, Ace was…he was confident. Happy, secure. When he came into the room, it was like all the lights turned up to full power just to reflect his energy. But you… Just look at you, man. You're miserable. You're like some kid who's been rejected from his school's zero-g football team. How can you have been a successful Ace and still be so…so sad? I'm not buyin' it."

"Sad?" Rimmer stood slowly, a strange fire lighting behind his dark, greenish-brown eyes. "You think I'm sad?"

"Yeah," Lister said, leaning back in his chair. "I think you're more miserable now than you were when you were stuck here with us. An' that's sayin' a lot."

Rimmer's eyes flashed and his nostrils flared. 

"Is that right?"

"Yeah."

"That's what you think."

"Yeah!"

"Well, did it ever occur to you, Lister," he snapped with a vehemence Lister had rarely heard from him, "that a person could succeed at playing a part, and succeed spectacularly, but still feel a failure underneath?"

Rimmer's face paled then, as if he longed to physically swallow those words. His eyes darted frantically around the room and he turned quickly, stalking toward the corridor. His stride was the stride of a man fighting to convince himself he was far too proud to run away. Lister stared after him but, before he could get up to follow, Kryten came shambling into the room at his top speed.

"Mr. Lister," he said, "I've just been talking with the Wildfire's computer. There's something she thinks you should know about Mr. Ace..." He looked behind him, down the empty corridor. "Was that Mr. Ace just then, sir?"

"Nah, jus' Rimmer," Lister said. "So come on, Krytes, what do you want to tell me?"

But Kryten had slipped into worry-mode and wouldn't be distracted. 

"He seemed upset. Did something happen here?"

Lister shrugged, covering a twinge of guilt. The hurt that had overtaken Rimmer's expression when he'd tried to get him to confess his real reasons for showing up had seemed disquietingly genuine.

"He'll get over it," Lister said, more to convince himself than to reassure Kryten. "I mean, the man's miserable, Kryten. It's obvious jus' to look at him. Rimmer's never been cut out for that hero smeg. All this is just his way of sayin' he wants to come back to Starbug without losing face."

"Did he tell you that, sir?" Kryten asked anxiously.

"No," Lister said. "But, that's gotta be it, doesn't it? An' maybe now he's back, he can give up bein' Ace and hand the mantle off to someone who possesses more backbone than a sea cucumber."

"Sir, you don't understand," Kryten said. "Mr. Rimmer has been doing well as Ace. Surprisingly well. He has no intention of coming back...at least, not yet. But he is in a very fragile emotional state. According to the Wildfire's computer, Mr. Rimmer is struggling to salvage his identity. To earn a sense of self-worth as himself, apart from the Ace legend. Your confrontation just now may have done a great deal of harm."

"Harm?" Lister scoffed. "No way, man. I just told him..." He trailed off, his brain spontaneously volunteering to reply their conversation as it might have sounded from Rimmer's point of view. "...ah, smeg."

Kryten wrung his hands. 

"We must find him, sir."

Lister sighed and ran his hands over his face, more upset than he could quite admit at the news Rimmer really didn't plan to come back. Lister had been suffering from guilt attacks and nightmares on and off since Rimmer had left, worrying that his goading had gotten the neurotic coward killed or worse. Seeing him again, solid and intact and so undeniably himself had come as a powerful relief. He wanted Rimmer to stay. But, what could he say? That Holly had been right to bring Rimmer back to keep him sane? That he'd been going slowly nuts without the uptight smeghead around to provoke him—or for him to provoke? No. Never. Not out loud, anyway.

He sighed again, then grabbed his jacket and stomped off down the corridor.

"All right, I think I know where he might have gone," he said over his shoulder. "Come on, Kryten, let's go."

*******

"Smeg him anyway, the festering little pustule. And smeg me for thinking I could…that I could expect them to…"

Rimmer swallowed hard. He glanced down at his perfectly fitted flight jacket; yet another costume he hadn't earned. The sight of the soft leather and shiny boots he'd so childishly admired filled him with mortification. The Cat was right, it was old fashioned. He looked like the founding member of the James Bigglesworth Look-Alike Society.

Angrily, Rimmer hit the reset on his lightbee remote. There was a brief shimmer, and he was suddenly back in Ace's despised silver flight suit. Only, this time there was a difference. Instead of a wig, Ace's long, manageable hair had become a permanent part of the image.

"This is what they want," he said bitterly, feeling utterly defeated. "It's what everyone wants. I should have known better than to try to drop the act."

The metal stairwell that linked the living area with the sleeping quarters wasn't much of a brooding spot, but it did have a thin window with a view of the stars. Rimmer stared out, not at the distant dots, but at the blackness that filled the space between them, rendering them unreachable, untouchable.

The stars had seemed much closer when he was a boy, back on Io. After the courts had granted him independence from his parents at age fourteen, upholding his claims of emotional and physical abuse, he'd felt vindicated, free. He'd left Io House and used the settlement money to enroll in flight school, where he'd actually excelled for the first time in his young life. At sixteen, he'd finally reached the minimum age for consideration by the Space Corps, and he and his flight tutor, a man called Donald who'd spent his evenings working as an onstage hypnotherapist, had been convinced that as soon as they saw him fly, he'd be on his way up the ziggurat of command.

It hadn't happened that way, of course. The Academy expected its entrants to be prepared in every subject, and the entrance exam was assigned at random. Arnold's best subject was military history, and he'd devoted three full months of his life to revising that topic, brimming with naive, teenage confidence that Lady Luck would turn a kind eye to all his hard work.

The exam that appeared on his screen was on chemistry. 

Arnold had never actually studied chemistry. He'd left Io House the semester before his year was scheduled to begin chemistry lab.

So, Arnold had, very calmly, raised his hand and kept it raised until the proctor—a very bored-looking commander—waved him over. He'd marched up to the man's desk and snapped to smart attention.

"Problem, son?" he'd asked.

"You might say that, sir," Arnold had replied, and launched into a succinct explanation of his position. There were no tears, no pleading, no hysterics. He made his case with calm, rational logic, then formally requested he be allowed to swap the chemistry exam for military history. The proctor had been impressed.

"It's the hallmark of maturity to recognize your limits, Mr. Rimmer," he'd said. "If Napoleon had been more like you, he might have waited 'till spring to march on Russia. You're here, you're prepared, what's the topic matter. Sit back at your station, and I'll send you the exam on military history."

Arnold had opened his eyes satisfied with a job well done. Until he looked around and realized he was lying in an infirmary bed hooked up to an IV. It was a day and a half later, he'd missed his flight test and there was a note on his medical chart reading 'mentally unstable.' His imagination had cooked up that little exchange with the proctor. He learned from a sniggering orderly that his real, conscious self had lapsed into an hysterical fit and been carted from the exam room by three MPs.

The nurses had assured him he could try again next year, but young Arnold had been too furious, and too impatient, to wait. He'd enlisted as a private and, despite his request to be assigned to a test base or flying squad, he'd been assigned as third technician on a mining ship—the lowest rank in the Space Corps.

Even then, he'd been undaunted. Third technician may not be much, but it was a start, and if he could just pass the astronavigation engineer's exam he'd be promoted to lieutenant, lickety split. No sweat for a kid who'd risen to the top of his class at flight school.

The astronavigation questions posed by the Space Corps were nothing like the basic, practical questions young Arnold had aced in flight school. These questions dealt with the theory of space flight, the mathematics of navigation and engine performance. Arnold could manipulate a control panel, navigate his way around moons and through asteroid fields, and even do limited repairs on a damaged shuttle, but he didn't have clue one about the complex equations behind it all. And so, he'd failed. Still undaunted, he'd enrolled in a special tutorial class designed for enlisted men and women who aimed to take the exam.

The tutorial was aimed at secondary school graduates who had a strong background in physics and higher mathematics; namely calculus and trigonometry. Arnold had never actually graduated from Io House, he'd just received a standard certificate acknowledging he'd attended the institution when he told them he was leaving. He'd also never taken physics—his year was supposed to start physics after chemistry—and the highest he'd gone in math was second level algebra. 

Too proud to admit he found the tutorial lessons incomprehensible, and trained from early childhood never to ask for help, he'd taken his notes, done his best to memorize the alien symbols, and tried the exam again. 

He'd failed. And he'd failed the next year, and the next.

By the time he was twenty-two, prepping to retake the exam had become so painful, his subconscious developed an elaborate system of procrastination that allowed him to convince his conscious self he was studying his guts out without actually having to endure the emotional agony of plowing through reams of information he didn't understand. He learned to spend months creating superbly detailed revision timetables, intricately color coded works of art that left him only a few hours for actual revision. The panic that broke out as a result often led him to resort to smoking, amphetamines, and illegal learning drugs, and the crash inevitably ended in a humiliating nervous breakdown, the most infamous of which left him convinced he was a fish.

After twelve long years of languishing in failure, Arnold was at last granted a promotion to Second Technician as a matter of course and assigned command of Z Shift, a redundant back-up maintenance crew that was given the jobs deemed too menial for the ship's service droids. Still, it was his command, and running it became his life. He took maintenance courses, read endless books on public speaking and personnel management. A year later, he was assigned to bunk with a third technician, David Lister. Two years after that, he was dead. 

Dead, at thirty-one, never having gotten off the bottom rung. Never having become a Space Corps pilot, or having had the chance to command his own ship. Never having proved his worth to the family that had abused and then rejected him.

It just wasn't fair.

And so, his hologram stood staring into the blackness between the stars, floundering to come to grips with a heroic identity he hadn't earned and didn't deserve. 

He was under no delusion that he'd been chosen to be the next Ace. He'd seen the warning message the first Ace had placed in the heading of his account of their meeting, and was quite aware his immediate predecessor had been forced to recruit him by default. Was it any wonder his former crewmates refused to accept him as anything but a failure?

The clang of footsteps on the metal stairs barely encouraged him to lift his head. 

"Lister," he said tiredly, "if that's you, you can turn around and head back the other way."

"Oh, excuse me," came a woman's voice. "No one told me we had a visitor." Her footsteps came to a startled stop. "Oh my God," she said. "It's you."

Rimmer straightened slowly and turned to face her. His jaw dropped. He knew her, and he also knew she wasn't from his dimension. He'd met her in another reality, on another Starbug, several years before, where she'd been the last human alive and Third Technician David Lister had been brought back as a hologram to keep her sane…

"Kris? Kristine Kochanski?"

"Ace…"

"But… But what are you doing here?" they chorused, rushing over to take each other's hands.

"You should be dimensions away," Rimmer said in Ace's rich, plummy voice, "with Dave! Not on this flea pit of a ship."

"And what about you?" Kochanski said, looking him up and down. "Shouldn't you be off rescuing damsels and repairing hologram simulation suites?" She lowered her eyes. "I owe you everything, Ace," she said. "If you hadn't come when you did, my Dave's file would have become permanently corrupted, and I'd have lost him forever."

"No. Don't thank me, really. I just did what anyone in my place would do."

She shook her head and gave him a fond smile. 

"Ace, after that horrid fiasco with the polymorph, the entire deck was a blazing inferno. No one could have survived that, not even Kryten. But you counted on the polymorph's shapeshifting ability and sense of self-preservation to protect you, and it worked. You dove straight into the flames and brought back Dave's hologram disk. You saved his life. And mine. Oh, I… I just—"

Kochanski planted a powerful kiss right on Rimmer's lips, just as Lister came clomping up the stairwell, Kryten skidding to a stop a few paces behind.

Several seemingly endless moments later, Kochanski broke the kiss and beamed at Lister, completely oblivious to the stunned, betrayed look crawling across his pudgy features.

"Lister, why didn't you tell me Ace Rimmer had come on board?" she scolded. "I could have set up a real hero's welcome for him!"

"Looked to me like you were doin' jus' fine." Lister scowled. "How far were you plannin' to go, a simple fanfare or the full twenty-one gun salute?"

Rimmer turned away, running a hand across his mouth. Kochanski frowned.

"Must you drag everything down to your crass level? Ace Rimmer is a friend. And in the normal, mature, adult world, it is perfectly acceptable to greet an old friend with a kiss."

She spoke slowly, like she was addressing a dog or a very young child. Lister bristled.

"So, that's considered etiquette in your circle, then?" he retorted. "You run into some bloke you haven't seen in a few years and jus' ram your tongue down his throat? Call me crazy, but I don't remember seein' that in those Jane Austen World games of yours."

Kochanski sucked in her cheeks, but refused to let herself rise to him. 

"Don't mind him, Ace," she said, giving his arm a supportive squeeze. "This Lister is an irritant I have to put up with until I can get back to my reality and my Dave. You make yourself at home. Kryten, why don't you come help me whip us all up a special supper?" She smiled at Rimmer. "I can't tell you how good it'll be to finally have someone to talk to whose vocabulary ranges beyond simple one and two-syllable grunts!"

With that, she swept past Lister and danced down the stairs to Kryten, leaving the two men alone.

Rimmer spoke first. 

"Lister, I can explain—"

"No, no need," Lister said with an airy coldness. "Was it even you she was kissin', or were you jus' acceptin' it for the real Ace Rimmer?"

He could see his words had hurt, and Lister had meant them to hurt. He'd harbored an abiding passion for Kristine Kochanski since before the radiation accident wiped out the Red Dwarf crew, and Rimmer knew it. All right, so this Kristine Kochanski came from an alternate universe. She was taller than the Kochanski he'd known, she had a different accent, she'd grown up rich, and could barely stand to share the same breathing space with him, but that didn't make any difference. She'd fallen in love with his alternate self back in her own dimension, and Lister was fully convinced if he was patient enough she'd eventually come to appreciate him too. That's why, Ace or no Ace, Rimmer had absolutely no business letting her kiss him, no matter the circumstances.

The angry barb had escaped his lips before he had time to think. In response, Lister had expected defensiveness, insults, stinging taunts regarding Kochanski's obvious loathing for him. 

But he hadn't expected what happened next. 

A change seemed to wash over Rimmer. It was subtle—a softening of his expression, the straightening of his shoulders, but suddenly, Lister felt that he didn't know the man standing before him at all.

"Skipper," this man said in a kind, though cheerless tone, clamping a strong hand on his shoulder as he passed by him on the stairs, "there is only one Ace Rimmer. And we all must accept that in the end."

To Be Continued...


	6. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

"Kryten, old son, you've outdone yourself. This meal is better than the dishes I tasted during my excursion to the annual food festival on Suirotapallafocirocaxar Prime. How you managed to pull together a feast like this with stores scavenged from derelict space vehicles is a wonder to me."

Cat paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. 

"Suiro—where?"

Kryten couldn't blush, but he did a fair job of mimicking a bashful wave. 

"Sir, you flatter me. It's only rehydrated chicken parts in soy-protein gravy."

"Raw materials handled by a master. With a meal of this quality, I don't dare speculate what you have planned for afters."

"Then, sir, you are in for a treat. I've prepared a special agar jelly with lumps of simulated fruit and a whipped carrageen topping."

Ace's eyebrows disappeared under his fringe. 

"Then what are we waiting for? Bring forth the masterpiece, old top."

As Kryten scampered to the kitchen area in a paroxysm of delight. Ace turned a wry smirk to Kochanski, who giggled behind her hand.

"Oh, Ace, you are terrible," she said, slapping his shiny sleeve. 

Lister rolled his eyes and dropped his fork to his plate with a disgusted clatter.

"Oh, Ace, you are terrible!" he mimicked her. "God, can you even hear yourself? The food's awful. It's always awful. You're jus' teasin' Kryten with all these backhanded compliments."

"Who's to say they're backhanded?" Ace retorted in his affable way. "I've spoken only the truth. Have you ever been to the Suirotapallafocirocaxar Prime Food Festival? Compared to the slop the GELFs there pass off as edible, Kryten's rehydrated chicken parts are a rare treat."

"They were pretty good," Cat agreed, daintily dabbing the corners of his mouth with a silk napkin.

"Cat!" Lister exclaimed.

"Well, they were," Cat said. "Better than last week's meat curry, anyway. Old butter-pat head never did tell us exactly what meat was in that stuff. And with all those spices and things mucking up the scent, my nostrils couldn't make a solid identification."

"My guess is it was space weevil," Kochanski said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. "It's always space weevil when he won't say. But Ace doesn't want to hear this."

"Ace," Lister scoffed. "He's really got you fooled, hasn't he. Why don't you drop the act, Rimmer? We all get what you're tryin' to do."

"Lister, leave him alone." Kochanski glared firmly, the sharp glare of an officer upbraiding an unruly underling. Lister bristled.

"No, no, it's all right," Ace said kindly. "Poor Dave's still sore over that kiss, aren't you Skipper? Well, there's no need to worry, old friend. Our charming Kris has eyes for only one man. And he isn't me."

"He isn't you either, so don't go getting any ideas," Kochanski added, but her expression turned slightly contrite when Ace gave her a disapproving look.

Lister scowled and turned his head toward the door to the kitchen, where he could just see Kryten happily pottering back and forth, putting his finishing touches on the translucent cubes of gelatinous dessert he'd spooned into individual glasses. His knotted stomach gave a lurch and he got to his feet. 

"Look, guys, I don't feel so good," he said. "I'm going to the medi-unit for somethin' to settle me stomach."

"Then I'll go with you—" Ace started to rise, but Lister shook his head.

"I can handle this on me own, thanks," he said bitterly. "Wouldn't want your little fan club to get all disappointed."

Ace's expression fell slightly. 

"Skipper, I understand you're upset, but I head back to the big black on the morrow. I don't want us to part company on bad terms—"

"Save it, Rimmer, OK?" Lister snapped, swiping his half-empty beer can from the table. "I'll see you guys later."

*******

Lister didn't go to the medical unit. He didn't pay much attention to where he was going, just so long as it was away from Rimmer's overblown Ace stories, Kochanski's ridiculous fangirl giggles and Kryten's agar jelly.

That's why he was startled to find himself in the docking bay staring up at the gleaming red exterior of Ace's Wildfire.

He stared at it for several minutes, running his eyes over the sleek lines, the polished chrome. Then, he slammed his beer can against the doorframe and lobbed the crumpled aluminum cylinder straight at the windshield. It bounced off harmlessly and rolled somewhere under a row of panels that lined the wall.

He was just turning to leave, when the ship's lights caught him in their glare.

"David Lister, I presume?" a sultry, female voice spoke. Lister blinked and shielded his eyes.

"Who's askin'?"

"Is Ace with you?"

"Does it look like he's with me?" Lister retorted. "An' will you switch off those smeggin' lights? I can't see a smeggin' thing."

The lights dimmed. 

"Better?" the disembodied voice asked snidely.

Lister blinked watery eyes up at the empty cockpit, his confusion melting away. 

"You're the Wildfire computer, aren't you?" he said.

"And you're an insensitive squid-haired cretin. I know what happened in the stairwell."

"Yeah. That Judas, Rimmer, snogged my Krissie."

"Your Krissie?" the computer scoffed.

Lister was not in the mood to be picked at by a computer. He launched an f-bomb and followed up with a few creative suggestions concerning the specifics of where and how.

"Nice. Arnie never told me you were so witty."

"Shut up."

"Not until I've had my say," the computer snapped. "You really messed things up properly, didn't you."

"What are you talkin' about?"

"Your petty, selfish attempt to return to how things were. Putting Arnie down, denying his success, stamping out his pride. All to keep your relationship frozen in time. Because, that's what you want, isn't it? No growth, no improvement. Just childish pranks and insults, on and on, year after pointless year, until you're both too old to break the habit."

"That's not what I did," Lister retorted.

"Isn't it?" the Wildfire shot back. "I've known hundreds of Listers throughout the multiverse. Male ones, female ones, talking dogs, evolved chickens. Trust me, your reaction is hardly original. You missed Rimmer, you worried about him while he was away, and now he's back you want him to stay. But not as a success, no. Not as someone who can show you up, put you in second place. You want him back just as he was, a socially-regressed emotional cripple. Well, congratulations, kiddo. You got him."

"What exactly are you saying to me?"

"I'm saying, curry-for-brains, that you have single-handedly turned the clock back on a project that has taken me years of patient, painstaking work. No, let me correct that—you didn't reset the clock, you sent it running backwards. Arnie was standing at the crossroads, perched on a delicate turning point. And now he's been pushed further back than he was when he first took up Ace's mantle."

"Hold on. I don't understand," Lister said.

"Then let me explain," the computer said coldly. And she did. Over the next fifteen minutes, she explained everything, her entire plan to coax Rimmer to finally reject his crippling self-loathing and accept himself as a valued and worthwhile man. A hero who could own the name Ace Rimmer, not be owned by it.

"Not be owned by it…" Lister repeated quietly.

"Starting to get the picture now, smeg-for-brains?" the Wildfire said, but her tone was no longer so cold.

"That's what happened, isn't it?" Lister said. "On that stairwell, when I said… When I told him…" 

He sighed and ran a hand over his trailing locks.

"He came here tryin' to salvage his identity, to earn a sense of self-worth, and what do I do? I push him over the edge." 

Lister shook his head, slowly jabbing his fist to the wall. 

"He just gave up, man. Surrendered, right before my eyes. An' I didn't even realize…"

"Dave…"

"It was weird, you know? Rimmer just seemed to vanish. And there was Ace. Like, for real. Ace. I've never seen anything like it."

"No." The computer seemed to sigh. "Dave, I know you didn't mean to do this. But Arnie's in pain right now. He's rejected his own personality because it hurts too much to be Arnold Rimmer. But Ace isn't a costume to hide behind when things get tough. For Ace to be strong, he has to be integrated, a fully realized personality. As long as Arnie keeps donning and discarding Ace like a mask, as long as he keeps turning away from his heart, keeping his hurt and anger bottled up deep inside, the Ace you saw will have all the depth and solidity of a playing card…and all the volatility of nitroglycerine."

Lister glanced up at the ship's dimmed lights. 

"What can I do?"

"For whom? For Arnie, or for yourself?"

Lister made a face. 

"Come on, don't give me that. How do I… How can I get Rimmer back to bein' the trumped-up smeghead he was when he first arrived?"

"Honestly? I don't think you can."

"But you just—"

"Your ties are strong, but I'm afraid they don't go back far enough to have the kind of impact we're looking for," the computer told him. "You were close enough to push him over the edge, but your relationship's just not strong enough to pull him back up. At least, not as far as we need him to go."

"So that's it, then?" Lister said, his anger swelling. "There's nothing we can do? Rimmer's gone, Ace is a flimsy canister of sublimated anger waitin' to explode, and that's it?"

The computer seemed to think for a moment. 

"There is a way," she said. "If it works, it could get Arnie back on the right track. But it's very dangerous."

"Dangerous how?"

"Dangerous as in one wrong move could create a massive temporal paradox that could rip a hole in the multiverse dangerous."

"Ah," Lister nodded. "That kind of dangerous. Well, we've faced worse."

"Oh, I don't think you have."

"Come on. Simulants? GELFs? That backwards universe? And how about that time we went back in time to order a curry and ended up savin' Kennedy's life an' allowin' the Russians to win the space race? We straightened that one out without any help. Then there's that pan-dimensional liquid beast and those brain-sucking Psirens and the suicide squid… You can't tell me after all that we can't handle a little time travel."

"It's not the time travel I'm worried about. That part's easy. All you have to do is set up a remote link between me and your Starbug's mainframe, and I can talk you through that, no sweat. It's what's waiting at the other end. That's where the challenge lies. And I'm just not sure you're prepared."

"Prepared for what? What kind of horrible, hideous, lurking monsters would we have to face to jolt Rimmer out of hiding and restore his self-esteem? What challenge could possibly be so terrible that you keep hedgin' around it instead of just comin' out and tellin' me what the smeg it is?"

Lister thought he was prepared for anything she could throw at him, but when she spoke, her response sent chills down his spine.

"Arnie's family."

"Ah. Right. Smeg."

"You still want to help?"

"I'm in," Lister said. "I've always wanted to meet the weirdos who made Rimmer what he was. An' seriously, they can't be that bad, can they? I mean, they're jus' people, yeah, and even Rimmer admits they're pretty successful. His brothers are what, a Space Corps captain, a test pilot, and the other one's in special services, right? They don't just hand those positions out."

The Wildfire computer laughed, but it was an eerie, humorless sound. 

Lister swallowed despite himself.

"Yeah, well, whatever. I did the damage, I'll help fix it. Just tell me what to do."

To Be Continued...


	7. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

"Now Ace, I want to be certain that you're completely, one hundred percent sure about this," Kochanski said as the pair of them walked down the corridor toward the docking bay. Kryten and the Cat followed a few steps behind, Kryten loaded down with bags and parcels and the Cat daintily carrying a red silk scarf. "I wouldn't want to put you out of your way..."

"As I told you last night," Ace said, taking her hand and giving it a reassuring pat. "It's no imposition at all. A hop here, a skip there, and I'll DJ you safe and snug to your home dimension before your dear ol' Dave has a chance to burn the breakfast crumpets."

"Oh, thank you," Kochanski said. "It's just...Lister, you know? He makes me so furious. I mean, here he has me actually feeling guilty about leaving this testosterone swamp, when all I want in this life is to hold my own sweet Dave again. Do you understand, Ace?"

"I've seen you with your Dave," Ace said. "I do understand how miserable you've been here. I'm sure ol' Skipper will understand too, given time. How's the Wildfire, Kryters old top?" the hero called over his shoulder. "Up to specs?"

Kryten leaned his head from side to side, trying to see around the bags.

"Last systems check showed her to be in tip-top shape, Mr. Ace, sir," the mechanoid said helpfully.

"Knew I could count on you, old man," Ace said proudly.

Kryten simpered happily.

The foursome turned a corner and strode into the cavernous docking bay. Kryten scampered around the gleaming Wildfire to stow Kochanski's bags in the hold while Ace climbed into the cockpit.

"Cat," Kochanski said. "My scarf, if you please?"

Cat clutched the red silk protectively.

"What scarf? This scarf?" He draped it around his neck. "Sorry, Officer BB. It's finders keepers, and I found it."

"Yes, in my closet," Kochanski snapped.

"I can't help where I found it," Cat retorted. "Point is, I found it, and that makes it mine. Just like these boots are mine. In fact all this," he gestured to his glitter-sprayed ensemble, "is mine!"

Kochanski rolled her eyes.

"Fine, keep it. What do I care? It's more than worth a lousy scarf to get out of this rusted-out frat house and back to my own ship and my own friends, where I belong."

"So, that's it then," Lister's voice sounded from the doorway. "You're really leavin' us."

Kochanski's expression tightened.

"Lister..."

"Nah, no need to explain," he said. "You saw a chance to get back to your perfect Dave, an' you took it. I can't blame you for that."

"Well," Kochanski said. "I'm pleased to find you so understanding."

"You're surprised's more like it," Lister said, and smiled a very small smile. Kochanski wasn't quite sure what that smile meant, but she returned it as best she could.

"No hard feelings, then?"

"I wouldn't go that far," Lister quipped, and Kochanski turned away in disgust.

"Why do I even try," she said, and called up to the cockpit. "Everything all right, Ace?"

"Ship-shape and Bristol fashion," Ace called back. "Not a trace left of that killer virus. Nice work, Kryters!"

Kryten shuffled out from under the hold.

"I'm afraid I can't take all the credit, Sir," he said. "The Wildfire computer is quite a determined AI."

"She is indeed," Ace said fondly, running his fingers over the controls. "Still, time's a tickin'. It's been a blast, fellas, but Kris and I should be getting on our way."

Kochanski glanced at Lister, who gave her an encouraging nod.

"Go on," he said, and winked.

"Right," she said, and climbed up into the narrow cockpit. Ace scooted over to make room for her, but it was still a cramped fit. Kochanski wrapped an arm around his shoulders and draped her legs across his lap, and that made it a little more comfortable.

"Take good care of her, you hear?" Lister called out.

"As if she were my own dear sister," Ace assured him. "Skipper, I—"

"Look," Lister said. "If it helps any, I'm sorry for what I said last night. I was angry an'...an' there was no call for it. 'S far as I'm concerned, you're the real Ace Rimmer."

Ace blinked rapidly.

"Now, get outta here," Lister said. "There's a multiverse out there that needs savin'."

"Good-bye, Dave," Ace said, and lowered the cockpit roof. "Smoke me a kipper, lads! I'll be back for breakfast!"

"Bye, Ace/Bye, Bud/Good-bye, Mr. Ace, sir!" the Dwarfers chorused, and dashed behind the safety field as the room depressurized and the docking bay doors slid open.

The Wildfire rose, turned, and shot out into the blackness of space, a streak of red lightening against the distant stars.

"Right," Lister said, slapping his hands together. "Race you to the cockpit!"

"Mr. Lister?" Kryten queried.

"Hurry up, Kryten," Lister shouted, already jogging up the corridor. "We've got to get in position before Ace activates the Dimension Jump!"

"What are you up to, bud?" Cat said, keeping an easy pace beside the gasping Lister. "You seemed awfully cool about Officer Bud Babe flyin' off with Ace. If you're plannin' to blow them up—"

"No, no, it's nothin' like that," Lister rasped, pressing a hand to his chest as he clambered through the cluttered cockpit and collapsed into the pilot seat. "Smeg! Either Starbug's gettin' longer or me legs are gettin' shorter."

"More like your gut's gettin' wider, bud," Cat sneered, slipping gracefully behind the navigation console. "All that beer, cigarettes, an' curry are catchin' up with you."

"Nah, it's definitely Starbug, man," Lister said, clearing his lungs with a few chesty hacks. "She hasn't been right since Rimmer blew up our future selves. Remember that? It was jus' before we went back in time an' talked Kennedy into shootin' himself."

"Not really," Cat said. "What did you drag us all up here for, anyway?"

Lister talked while he worked, bringing the Wildfire up on the ship's main viewer and synching up their course and speed.

"It's the Wildfire, man," he said. "She's got this mad plan to help Rimmer."

"Help Rimmer?" Cat wrinkled his nose. "What for? He looked fine to me."

"Yeah, on the outside," Lister said. "On the inside he's still the same cringin', craven loser he always was. The Wildfire says it's up to us to help him, before Rimmer's twisted-up rubber band of a brain snaps completely."

Kryten wrung his plastic fingers.

"Sir, would this plan entail linking Starbug's main computer to the Wildfire's AI unit, then following Ace and Miss Kochanski through the multi-dimensional vortex – not to Miss Kochanski's home dimension, but rather to Mr. Ace's own past, with the intention of forcing Mr. Ace to confront his abusive family and, thereby, recognize and defeat the psychological demons that have been stalking him his entire adult life?"

"How did you know?" Lister asked accusingly.

"Call it a random guess, sir."

"Wait," Cat said. "Are you tellin' me we've got to follow Ace through that giant swirly thing?"

The Dwarfers looked ahead just in time to see the Wildfire disappear into a wavering, inter-dimensional rip. Half a second later, Starbug too was caught in the anomaly's blinding orange light. The small, green transport ship rocked and shuddered, rattling the terrified Dwarfers around like gems in a rock-polisher.

"Too late to turn back now," Lister juddered, his brains feeling like they were being pureed against his skull. "Hold on to your hats, everyone. We're goin' in!"

To Be Continued...


	8. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

The Wildfire slid through the tumultuous vortex with barely a shudder.

"Impressive handling," Kochanski said, and she would have said more but a sudden blaring klaxon drowned her out.

"That's the proximity alarm!" Ace shouted over the din, switching the noise off as his fingers raced over the controls. "Something's coming through after us. I can't quite— Wait, wait, this is wrong…"

"What's wrong?" Kochanski demanded. The former navigation officer stared at the blinking lights and dials on the control panel, but while the basic set-up was familiar, the multidimensional readouts were beyond her. "What's happening?"

"We're off course," Ace snapped. "Autopilot's engaged. What the smeg does she think she's doing?"

A soft crackle of static, and the Wildfire's sultry voice spoke, "It's for your own good, Arnie."

"My good?" Ace demanded, anger cracking his calm, competent façade. "But, this is mutiny! Usurping control, altering our course! What about Kris?"

"You want to dispense with the mask, don't you?" the Wildfire responded. "To step out of Ace's long shadow?"

"Wait, what are you saying?" Kochanski said. "I thought he was Ace."

"He is Arnold Rimmer," the computer said, the name causing the hero an involuntary flinch. "Lately Second Technician aboard the JMC Transport Vessel Starbug. And unless he accepts that he will never be more than a second-rate actor trapped in a part he can play, but never truly make his own. Your words, Arnie. Don't say I never listen."

Kochanski turned on Ace. 

"What is this?" she demanded. "Is she saying that you...you... You're the Rimmer Lister missed? The anal retentive with the shoe trees and labeled underpants? But...but, then, who was it rescued my Dave's disk from that fire? Was he the man you replaced?"

"Wonderful," Rimmer said. "I come up with a daring plan, I risk my life and sanity with that blasted Polymorph, and Saint Ace still gets the credit."

Kochanski blinked, surprised at the change in his voice and manner.

"I didn't mean-"

"Yes you did, so shut-up," Rimmer said. "Where are you taking us, Computer? Can you tell me at least that much?"

"See for yourself," the Wildfire said as the sleek ship slid out of the vortex and into normal space.

Starbug followed a moment later, out of control and rocking, shuddering and spinning so erratically the Wildfire had to take quick evasive action to avoid being smashed into parts.

"What-are they in on this too?" Rimmer exclaimed. "Is this all some scheme you lot have been hatching behind my back? Let's take the piss out of that idiot Rimmer? The moron who tried to be Ace?" He slammed his fist on the console. "I trusted you, Computer. You were the only thing in this cruel multiverse I ever did trust. I can't believe you would betray me like this!"

"It's not like that, Arnie," the Wildfire said. "Your friends care about you. They want to help."

"Help with what? My complete and utter humiliation? Well, mission accomplished!"

"Use your eyes and look past those stupid flared nostrils of yours," the Wildfire snapped. "You have a mission to accomplish, Arnie, and your friends have come to support you. Not to mock or belittle your efforts. They want you to succeed."

"Succeed at what?" Kochanski asked. "Where are we?"

"Ask Arnie," the Wildfire said, and turned the ship away from the slowly stabilizing Starbug to face-

"Io," Rimmer gasped, staring in awe at the crusty, pock-marked Galilean moon. Space craft of all shapes and sizes swarmed around the volcanic satellite in neatly demarcated spacelanes, and Jupiter's hulking sphere loomed just beyond, its stormy red glow reflected in the greenish domes that sprawled across the moon's surface.

The comm system crackled and Lister's gerbil face appeared on the screen, grinning from ear to ear.

"Hey, looks like we made it!" he crowed. "Welcome home, Ace!"

To Be Continued...


	9. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

"I do not want to be here," Rimmer muttered. "I truly do not want to be here."

The Dwarfers had left their vehicles parked snugly in a sort of maintenance shed just inside the surprisingly crowded parking dome that stood adjacent to the much, much larger private dome that protected the Rimmer family estate from Io's harsh climate. From orbit, the two domes looked like two gigantic, slime green scum bubbles, the smaller one half-swallowed by the bigger one. But, to Lister's mind, which had grown up under the blue skies and open spaces of Earth, the domes looked even worse from the inside.

Despite the twitter of birdsong and the occasional squirrel or rabbit peeping out from the grass, there was something about this place that churned the Earthman's gut, something faux and unnatural. The air was unusually heavy and warm, and smelled like the inside of a greenhouse that had been shut up all summer. White floodlights dotted the landscape, but they seemed to be more for the plants' benefit than any causal stroller. Most of the light in the dome was the secondhand sunlight reflected off the massive face of Jupiter, whose looming orange storms seemed close enough to touch.

Lister shivered a little, then sneezed all over his jacket.

The Cat recoiled, but Kryten scurried to offer him a handkerchief.

"Thanks, man," Lister said, and cleared his sinuses with a honk that should have resonated for miles. In the dome's enclosed atmosphere, it sounded dull and feeble. Lister blew his nose again, then wiped at the little wet sprinkles that dotted his leather sleeve.

Kochanski grimaced and shook her head, as if to say, "Hopeless!"

"So," Lister said, after handing the damp cloth back to Kryten, "how far to civilization?"

"What 'civilization'?" Rimmer scoffed, glowering at the rolling expanse of trimmed trees and manicured lawn as if it were a bleak tarmac stretched between the thick, barbed wire-topped walls of a prison. "There's only the main house, the greenhouses, and a few maintenance and hunting sheds scattered about between the trees. Father was always mad about hunting. Well, shooting really. Gave him an excuse to mess about with all those guns he kept collecting."

"Guns?" Kochanski looked around nervously. "Then, shouldn't you go on ahead and introduce us? I, for one, have no intention of being shot as a trespasser."

Rimmer's smile was as hollow as his eyes.

"Oh, my father wouldn't shoot you for trespassing," he said.

The Cat seemed to brighten.

"No?"

"No," Rimmer affirmed. "Just breathing's excuse enough for him."

Cat's expression crumpled.

"Your family's all nutters, Rimmer," Lister said. "The lot."

"Father and Mother, I'll grant you," Rimmer said flatly. "Perhaps even myself. But not good ol' John, Frank, and Howard. They're the success stories here. Perfect lives, perfect careers… Perfect hair…"

Rimmer raked a hand over his own dense curls and started marching in a direction slightly diagonal from where they'd been standing.

"If you're coming, mind to walk where I step," he called back without turning. "The house security computer doesn't take kindly to the uninvited."

He lifted his head, his beady eyes narrowed almost to slits as he scanned the familiar landscape. He knew every tree his brothers had lashed him to, every rose bush they'd dumped him in, every anthill they'd forced him to lick. It stung that the Wildfire would inflict this upon him, and stung deeply. That she would allow the people who had rejected him, the people who had crippled his childhood and mangled his adult ambitions the satisfaction of seeing, first hand, the abject failure he'd become…

"A lovely contrast to the John-Frank-and-Howard set this motley crew'll make, yes indeedy-do," he muttered darkly as he stomped the lush, even grass under his flight boots. "Second Tech Bonehead Rimmer and the dregs of the Mining Corps sipping champagne and nibbling strawberries with the cream of the Space Corps elite. Wonderful."

He paused for a moment to suppress a shudder, only just managing to make it look like he was waiting for the others to catch up with his long strides.

"Let's get this bloody reunion over with."

*******

Ever since that last injection, Cdr. Frank Rimmer's left arm had become a burning, tingling, aching irritation. He tried to attend to General Metzeler as she prattled on and on about The Project, but Frank's mind kept slipping away to a luxurious Jacuzzi tub where his hot, prickling arm could be soothed and massaged by streams of air bubbles. If he closed his eyes, he could almost feel the smooth porcelain beneath his feet, smell the sharp, chemical scent of Io's heavily treated water…

But this was his parents' anniversary party, and he had to bite his lip and bear the discomfort for the sake of The Family, The Corps, and The Project. His parents would expect no less.

"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"

Frank felt the tug of little fingers on his uniform and swallowed a frustrated sigh.

"I'm so sorry, General," he excused himself. He stepped a discrete distance from the table, then glared down at his offspring. Four bright eyes stared eagerly up at him from two flushed little faces. Frank's irritation grew.

"Can't you see I'm talking with important people," he snapped. "Where is your mother?

"Daddy, you have to come!" the little girl said, pushing her younger brother back so she could have more of her father's attention. "Security's reported intruders on the grounds! I saw them on the monitors!"

She reached for his hand, but Frank pulled away from her touch, his arm tingling and burning worse than ever. The girl's crestfallen expression didn't even register in his peripheral vision.

"Why bother me?" he demanded. "Why not annoy your grandfather, or irritate your uncles?"

"We tried," the boy piped up.

"And?" Frank snapped.

The little boy wilted, but managed to squeak, "They said we're your brats and should pester you."

Frank clenched his teeth against the surging pain in his arm and turned his blazing eyes on the boy.

"Serves me right for letting your sap of a mother talk me into having children in the first place," he growled through his agony. The searing heat was moving up his shoulder now, into his back and neck. Gesturing to his daughter, he said, "You, girl. Show me to the monitors already."

The hurt on the girl's face shifted to a superior sneer, which she aimed at her snubbed little brother.

"It's this way, Daddy," she said, and led the way into the house.

*******

Rimmer led the Dwarfers up a curving hillside stairway lined with flowering laurels, azaleas, and oleanders. Off to the right, a painstakingly crafted waterfall splashed down rocks that had been cut and placed 'just so' to create a prismatic rainbow effect.

"This place might be beautiful, if it wasn't so artificial," Kochanski said. "As it is, it puts me in mind of a theme park, or that cheezy asteroid casino with the android barmaids: At'Vegas City."

"At'Vegas City. Yes, I know of it," Kryten said, sounding somewhat disapproving. "The place that actually promotes itself as the happy merger of two of the tackiest places on Earth."

"'Cept, it's not on Earth," the Cat said with a wicked grin. "I remember, ol' Gerbil-Cheeks and I once spent four whole days playing the AR Video Game. What happens At'Vegas stays At'Vegas, baby!"

"Wait until you see the house," Rimmer said dryly. "It should be visible in just a few…" He climbed the last of the stairs and peered over the broad, neatly terraced hilltop gardens. "Ah. And there it is."

Lister had been puffing and cursing Rimmer and all Rimmer's ancestors the whole climb up the stone stairway. Now, as his head rose over the rim of the hill, his jaw dropped and he sagged, gasping to catch his breath.

"Smeg, Rimmer," he wheezed. "It's a smeggin' castle!"

"More of a stately home," Rimmer corrected.

From the look Lister shared with the Cat, it was clear he thought Rimmer was bragging. But Kochanski, who'd grown up among the wealthy set, could tell he was more embarrassed than proud of the ostentatious structure.

At first glance, its thick, square walls and castellations put the observer in mind of the Tower of London, but the sweeping spires and rows of windows were more like Highclere Castle. It was an unfortunate happenstance that the building's rich, pink marble façade looked a horrible, murky brown in the greenish orange daylight under the dome.

"Well, whatever it is, there's clearly something going on there today," Kochanski observed, standing on her tiptoes to peer over the topiary hedges. "Look at all those tents on the terrace."

The others jostled to see what she was seeing. As they did, a row of gem-like ruby balloons rose from among the white pavilions to spell out "Many Happy Returns" – a feat achieved through the careful manipulation of the static electricity generated by the dome itself.

Rimmer's face paled, and he swayed on his feet.

"Oh, no," he said. "Oh, no no no no no."

Lister gripped his arm.

"What's with you, man? See someone you recognize?"

"She did this to me on purpose, I know she did," Rimmer sputtered, his ivory complexion filling with blotchy red.

"Who did what, Goalpost-Head?" the Cat demanded.

"The Wildfire computer, of course," Rimmer snarled. "She brought me here, to this place, on this day, at this time because…because she knew…she knows—"

"Knows what, Rimmer," Lister exclaimed. "Don't keep us in suspense, man."

Rimmer hung his head, his rigid posture on the verge of cracking.

"It's my parents' fortieth wedding anniversary. The day I swore…"

He choked, but swallowed hard and forced himself to go on, his eyes hard and bleak.

"I dreamed of this day so often, when I was young. This big anniversary party... It was supposed to be my perfect moment. The moment I would finally march up to my parents, look them straight in the eye and say, 'I did it. I passed the navigation exam. I'm an Officer.' And they would look at me and, for the first time, the first time in my hopeless, wretched life, they would see me. They would see me. My father would look to my mother. My mother would nod her head. Just slightly. Just enough to indicate her approval. And, just like that, I would be welcome at the table. The Officers' Table. The Family Table. Not fobbed off on the servants. That was how it was supposed to be. That was how it should have been. Except…"

"Except, you didn't pass," Lister said, the blunt words sounding much gentler than they read.

"Not that time," Rimmer said stiffly. "Nor the time after that. Nor the countless times after that. So, I stayed away. I threw myself into my career. And now…"

"And now, what?" Kochanski said. "What have you to be ashamed of, right here, at this moment?"

Kryten was ready with an answer.

"Well, there's his lifetime of failures, his inability to climb any higher up the ladder of command than head custodian of a redundant janitorial team aboard a rundown mining craft with faulty drive plates, his—"

"Enough, Kryten," Lister interrupted.

"But, that's not you anymore, is it," Kochanski said. "Maybe it was years ago, before you left with the Wildfire, but you've changed since then. I've seen it. The man I met aboard my Red Dwarf was not the man Kryten just described. He was brave, charming, humble – a genuine hero!"

Rimmer snorted.

"He was just a character," he said. "An act I put on. He wasn't me. Not really."

"Oh? And what about this other bloke, then," Kochanski pressed, starting to get angry. "This sniveling little failure I've heard so much about. Who's to say he's not an act too, hm? Who's to say he's not a safe little character you put on when you need an excuse not to try – an excuse to back away from what scares you the most!"

"And what's that?" Rimmer demanded.

Kochanski narrowed her eyes, and her voice got low and dark.

"Why don't you tell me?"

Rimmer's nostrils widened and he seemed to tremble all over until, finally, he turned away, his furious glare directed fully at the floating balloons high above.

"You don't know me," he said. "None of you do. None of you ever did."

"I reckon that's truer of no one more than it is of yourself," Kochanski retorted unsympathetically. "You don't know yourself, Mr. Rimmer. You don't trust yourself, and you've no idea what you're actually capable of. But, the Wildfire has, and she brought us here for a reason."

"Don't mention that traitor," Rimmer snapped. "I—"

"Stop where you are! We have you covered!"

The Dwarfers jumped at the tinny sound of a male voice filtering through a speaker planted in a nearby bush. A moment later, a circle of thin metal poles shot up from the ground, enclosing the intruders within an powerful electronic fence.

*******

Inside the Rimmer mansion's lavish security room, Frank's little daughter looked up from the 3D monitor with dark, predatory eyes.

"We've got them now, haven't we, Father?"

Frank nodded; a slow, suspicious movement.

"That we have, my girl," he said, patting her head with the hand that didn't feel like molten lava was coursing through its veins. "That we have."

To Be Continued…


	10. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Rimmer laughed his plumiest laugh, but his dark eyes burned. Getting caught in one of his father's squirrel traps – he felt like a humiliated eight year old all over again. His memory echoed with the sound of his three brothers laughing like heckling hyenas while they sat in the security room, zapping him mercilessly with stun bolts. Now, here he was, some three million years and countless dimension-hopping adventures later, and what had changed? Nothing, it seemed, but his height.

"What's going on—what is this?" Kochanski demanded, struggling to find space to breathe between Lister's curry-crusted jacket, Kryten's sharp angles, and Cat's perfumed shoulder.

"Keep still. I can handle this," Rimmer assured them. Speaking in his best 'Ace' voice, he called out, "Very funny, very funny. But, the joke's over. Drop the forcefield and let's join the party, what?"

"Can I zap the intruders, Daddy?" said Frank's little girl, her small hand hovering over the security room's touch console.

"Me, let me!" her brother piped up. "Please, Daddy, I promise I won't miss!"

"Out of the way," Frank said, shooing his kids away from the viewscreen and claiming the chair for himself. His left arm throbbed and burned, but he clenched his teeth against the pain and zoomed the image in until he could clearly make out his prisoners' faces.

"Is that…" He frowned and leaned in closer, turning on the speaker. "But it couldn't be…Fletch? Cousin Fletcher? It's Frank! Ol' Frankie-boy. I thought you were stuck in that special training camp on Phobos! Or, was it Deimos?"

"What, and miss all this?" Rimmer said, ignoring Lister's questioning look. "It's not every marriage that makes it to the big 40. Thought I'd drop in to pay my respects."

"Well, just so long as you're prepared to pay for your dinner," Frank said, doing his best to keep his voice light and free of pain. "You know how the folks are about the whole RSVP thing – caterers charging by the plate and all that. But, come on up to the house, you and your friends. I'll meet you at the check-in table."

Frank turned off the speaker and released the trap. The energy field dissipated with a crackling sigh, and the poles disappeared back into the ground.

"Does this mean we don't get to zap them?" his son said sulkily.

"Yes, that's what it means," Frank said irritably, and clutched his seething arm.

"But, Daddy, who is this Cousin Fletcher person?" his daughter asked as she trailed Frank out of the room. "I've never heard of him."

*******

"Yeah, Rimmer, give," Lister said, as the Dwarfers continued their march through the vast, postcard-perfect gardens. "Who's 'Fletch,' and just who are we supposed to be?"

"Captain Simon Fletcher was my mother's half-sister's son," Rimmer explained, his eyes fixed grimly on the path ahead. "I hardly knew him, he was so much older than me. But, I remember, my brothers used to follow him like puppies whenever he came 'round for the holidays. He was some kind of engineer, I think…worked on Earth for a while before joining the Space Corps. So, if Frank thinks I'm him, and he's supposed to be in special training or whatnot, then you lot can pretend you're—"

"No, stop, this isn't right," Kochanski broke in. "You can't go on letting your family think you're your cousin. That would simply be exchanging one mask for another. And before you start with the excuses, Second Tech Rimmer, just remember the Wildfire brought you here for a reason. I, for one, do not want to risk that scheming ship of yours stranding us on this backwater moon, so ridiculously far in the past, because you couldn't find the guts to face your family as yourself."

"Ah ha!" Rimmer said. "So you are bitter about your trip home being derailed! I knew that whole 'gallantly selfless officer' thing was an act."

Kochanski almost choked, she was so affronted. Lister rushed to thump her back – until she froze him with a glare. Still, "I'm with Kris, man," he said to Rimmer. "We didn't come here to put on some show for your folks. The whole point of this trip is to help you face up to the truth of who you really are."

"No matter how awful that truth might be," Kryten said.

The group nodded…including Rimmer.

"Wait, I don't get it," Cat said.

"Get what?" asked Lister. "Rimmer bein' a weasely flake or Kochanski gettin' all passive-aggressive, like usual?"

"Hey," Kochanski said. "I am not passive-aggressive."

"Would you prefer overtly aggressive, then?"

Lister grinned, provoking Kochanski to ball her fists.

"Why you unwashed, squid-haired little—"

"No, no, no, I get all that," the Cat said, waving their argument away. "What I don't get is these people. I mean, they're supposed to be old Goalpost Head's family, right? His mother, father, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and all the rest?"

"So they tell me," Rimmer muttered.

"Right," Cat said. "So how come they would think you're this 'Fletch' guy and not you? Don't they know what you look like?"

Rimmer chuffed a humorless laugh.

"As far as they know, Mssr. Arnold Rimmer is currently seventeen years of age and filling his days supervising the busiest spaceport on Titan. Not that any of them believed my letters. Really, I was taking a refresher maintenance course – the very course, in fact, which qualified me as a third technician and, ultimately, would land me that fateful position on Red Dwarf."

"So, what's your point?" Cat asked.

"I'm not seventeen," Rimmer said, and he quickened his pace, leaving the rest of the group to catch up.

*******

The Dwarfers met Frank at a small, fold-out table beside the extensive marble patio where the anniversary reception was in full swing. He stood ready with nametags and markers, "For the caterers," he explained. "Write your preferred entrée at the bottom, under your name. Mother and Dad will have the bill sent to you."

"Good luck with that, bro…" Lister chuckled to himself, then leaned back and glanced at the others as they wrote, only to snicker loudly when he read Cat's tag.

"Looks like your name's Cat Fish, man," he said. "Oh, what's that make me, then? Dave Curry?"

"Sounds about right," Kochanski said dryly, printing pasta in parentheses on her nametag.

"No, wait, I'll write in 'Dave Vindaloo,'" Lister said. "That way, when you make the introductions, you can say 'Meet Vindaloo,' get it? Meat Vindaloo? An' you, Rimmer – you can be Arnold: Chicken. Or is it Fletcher Ribeye?"

"You, Lister, are about as funny as a cist on a cow's neck," Rimmer said, pressing his neatly printed 'Arnold J. Rimmer' nametag firmly to the front of his flight suit. 

Frank took one look at it and barked a laugh that would have gone on a lot longer if his throbbing arm hadn't so rudely distracted him.

"You find something amusing?" Rimmer said archly.

"That's good!" Frank said, coughing a little to cover his agonized wince. "Honestly, the way you flared your nostrils...! But, you really are a nutter, Fletch. You know how Mother and Dad feel about that boneheaded little twat. Still, good gag. John and Howie should get a kick out of it."

"I'm sure they will," Rimmer muttered, and flexed his kicking foot.

"Are you really our cousin?" a little voice peeped. Rimmer looked down to spot two round faces staring up at him, one boy and one girl.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"We—" the girl started.

"Oh, those are just my kids," Frank said, grabbing their arms and roughly herding them into the milling crowd. "Can't you see grown-ups are talking? Go find your mother and quit getting underfoot," he snapped.

Rimmer frowned, but didn't comment. Instead he said, "Excuse me, Frankie-lad, but I should go find the hosts…let them know I'm here. Manners, and all that," and headed in the direction the kids had gone.

"We should go too," Kochanski said, and the rest of them, not wanting to hang around at the table with Rimmer's brother when there was food and drink – and women – just beyond, quickly faded into the crowd.

Frank, apparently, felt the same about them now his favorite 'cousin' had left. As soon as he was alone, the silently suffering Space Corps commander let out a shaky sigh and gingerly cradled his arm against his chest.

The throbbing pain was getting so much worse, spiking in his neck and shoulders and prickling down his spine into his thighs and toes. For an endless stab of a moment, only one thought besides pain possessed his brain: the prospect of grabbing a bottle of painkillers and slipping into that hot, steaming, soothing Jacuzzi.

Clutching his arm, Frank practically ran back into the house. He knew the reception dinner was due to start any moment, he knew he was expected not only to attend, but to participate, but for once in his life, he honestly couldn't care. The way his arm felt, nothing on Io was going to keep him from that steaming Jacuzzi tub – not the dinner, not the general…not even the threat of his parents' disapproval. In half an hour, when the painkillers had kicked in and his current misery had dulled to something almost tolerable, then he'd return to the speeches and songs and whatever other duties his parents and superiors had in mind for him.

Maybe.

To Be Continued...


	11. Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

"Hey, Officer B.B.," the Cat said, slinking up beside Kochanski. "I don't get it!"

"That's a change," she muttered, scanning her eyes over the impeccably dressed and coiffed crowd from her vantage point by the bandstand at the center of the marble promenade. Lister had parked himself by the open bar, claiming to be parched after their long hike through the grounds. Kryten was engaged in a rather animated conversation with one of the house droids…something fussy about vacuum attachments. But Kochanski…

She'd grown up among gatherings like this, absorbed from early childhood the mannerisms and affected ennui of the rich, the spiteful, and the perpetually bored. There was a time she would have schmoozed right in, effortlessly asserting her dominance among the established cliques with a few backhanded criticisms against the style choices and accessories of each queen bee, a passive aggressive smile fixed firmly to her face.

But now…

These people, the attitude they projected… It all seemed so alien to her, so strange. Had her time alone in space really affected her this much? Had her experience being the last human alive altered her perspective to the point where…

…where, she no longer fit in?

"Yo, are you even listening to me?" Cat's voice broke in on her thoughts. "I am trying to tell you about my suit!"

"Sorry, I'm sorry, Cat," Kochanski said, shaking herself out of her odd musings. "What were you saying?"

But, the Cat just went on talking, following his own one-track thought.

"It looks so dangerous, too!" he said, picking at his lapel. "And, still, not one of these women here will give me so much as a smile! I just don't get it! Are they sick?"

"No, Cat, they're not sick," Kochanski said.

"Robots, then?"

"No, they're not robots." She shook her head, and almost smiled. "Cat, if you want this crowd to take any notice of you, they first have to think you're somebody worth noticing."

"I am somebody worth noticing!" Cat exclaimed.

"No, no, I mean somebody famous – important. Someone who can make them seem important by association."

"You lost me, Bud Babe," Cat said. "Hey, maybe if I found a pair of skates and a megaphone—"

Kochanski let him ramble for a moment, a rather amusing notion blooming in her brain. A notion that, if it worked, would not only help her feel better about herself, but possibly benefit their mission as well. After all, what was good for the mission was good for the Wildfire, and satisfying the Wildfire could only increase Kochanski's chances of finally getting home to her universe, her Dave…

"Cat, stop," she said, resting a hand on his arm until he closed his mouth and met her eyes. "You're going about this from the wrong angle. Making a splash with a group like this…it's not about noise and flash. It's all about attitude. Presentation! Here, let me show you."

She waved a hand in front of her face, hoisting her expression into a patented 'social smile'.

The Cat started to mimic her smile, his white fangs looking rather dingy in the orange-greenish light, but Kochanski shook her head.

"No, not you," she said. "Only I should smile. You want to look sort of distant. Distracted. Like you have better places to be and can't be bothered wasting your time with these people."

"Like this?" Cat asked, shifting his stance and staring out at the curving dome, as if waiting for a taxi to show up.

"Eh… Good enough," she said. "Now, I don't want you to talk. Just keep looking bored and disdainful and follow my lead. Ready?"

Cat glanced down at her over his nose.

"Hey, that's pretty good," she said. "OK, here we go."

She picked out the nearest queen bee, met her eyes, then strode straight past her table, holding up her hand in a little wave to a random spot just ahead.

"Alan! Emma!" she cried.

About fourteen heads turned toward her.

"Psst!" the Cat hissed. "Who are Alan and Emma?"

"They're just popular names," she whispered back. "I knew twelve Emmas at school, and at least eight Alans. I could have called out John and Missy and it would have been the same thing. Now, just keep quiet and follow me!"

She straightened her shoulders, shifting into full-on schmooze mode.

"It's so wonderful to see you both again! Remember, we met in the islands last season?" she said loudly, beaming at the furthest couple and making a show of walking past the others before snagging a seat at the table. The Cat remained standing, looking as bored and distanced as he could. "You simply won't believe who I've managed to persuade to join as my plus one – but I'm sure I don't have to introduce him to you! You're always so up on the latest designs!"

"Oh, is he in fashion, then?" Alan asked, looking the Cat up and down.

"Alan, really! How can you even ask that?" Emma scolded, terrified of looking stupid in front of someone she ostensibly 'should' recognize. "Surely even you must be familiar with this man's work."

"Wasn't he the featured artist at Mars Fashion Week last month?" another woman spoke up, moving toward them from a different table. "Yes—I bought a pair of your shoes!"

"I have the hat," someone else said, and Kochanski leaned back in her chair, her smile twisting into a satisfied smirk as a crowd of women, and a few men, quickly formed around the delighted Cat, all of them fighting for the attention of this apparent celebrity.

"Guess I haven't lost my touch after all," she muttered to herself, checking her nails, then letting her eyes drift over to the main table, where Rimmer's parents seemed to be holding court. Rimmer himself, though, was nowhere to be seen…

*******

Rimmer trailed Frank's children like a lioness stealthily stalking an infant wildebeest, on the lookout for larger game. In this case, Frank's wife, Janine.

Janine Rimmer had once been a popular fashion model – a career she had given up shortly following her marriage. Long ago, her sylphlike figure had graced the huge, holographic billboard outside young Arnold's dorm window, back at Io House.

Well, it hadn't been just outside his window…he'd had to use computer-enhanced binoculars to see it, right at the turn-off by the dome's only shopping center…but her image had haunted his pre-teen dreams just the same. His young imaginings had extended no further than handholding, now and then a kiss, but his boyish crush on his stunning sister-in-law had lingered far into adulthood.

He hadn't attended the wedding, hadn't even known he had a niece and nephew. To tell the truth, it had never occurred to him to ask after his brothers' families at all. He'd always been too wrapped up in his own career, his own driving need to prove himself…

And yet, here they were, right in front of him: two children. The living, breathing offspring of Frank and his famously beautiful wife. Further evidence of his brothers' total success in life…and how he, Arnold, remained a failure even after death…

Rimmer had no idea what he would say if he saw Janine now. Most likely, he'd end up tongue tied and slink away before she even noticed he was there. Actually, he didn't know why he was bothering to even—

"Mummy! Mummy!" the children started peeping, and Rimmer froze in place, his 'heart' thumping in his throat.

A woman with short-cropped brown hair peered over her wineglass, her heavy – though expertly applied – makeup unable to cover the weariness in her red-rimmed eyes or the red flush from the alcohol that colored her rounded face. Her loose clothes draped elegantly over her thickset frame, and emerald jewelry twinkled in Jupiter's orange light.

She sighed and drained the glass, setting it down on the private table where she sat alone beside her nameplate, overlooking the chattering crowd. A man in flashy clothes seemed to be drawing a great deal of interest, but she had other concerns besides finding out the whos and whys of his apparent celebrity.

"Don't tell me," she said, glancing down at the children. "Your father's been detained…again. Did he even manage to get the seating chart changed so we can at least see each other during the dinner?"

The children were too full of their own exciting news to listen.

"Mummy, there were intruders on the grounds!" the girl exclaimed.

"I'm sure there were, honey," the woman mumbled over her daughter, preoccupied by her own dark thoughts as the children continued relating their recent adventure. "I don't know why we even bother to show up to these so called 'family' events. No one here needs me, Frank least of all. If he's just going to disappear the moment we arrive—"

"Daddy didn't disappear," the boy said, picking up the thread of his sister's story. "He let us work the security controls! Well, sort of. We didn't get to shoot the lasers, though."

Janine pinched her nose, only vaguely aware of what the children were saying.

"Look, Mummy can't play right now, sweetie," she said wearily. "Why don't you and your sister go explore the garden? Make sure you keep out from underfoot."

"But, Mummy—" the girl whined.

"Please! Let's not get shrill," Janine winced.

"Mummy, you're not listening!" the girl shrieked. "The man's standing right here!"

"Hmm?" the woman said blearily. "Who's where, Cinthy?"

"One of the intruders!" the girl exclaimed, grabbing Rimmer's arm and dragging him toward her mother's table. "See?"

Rimmer jolted out of his gape-mouthed stupor, too startled to pull away from the girl's powerful grip.

"Daddy called this one Cousin Fletch," Cinthy said. "But the ones with him looked even weirder!"

"One of them said he was a Cat!" the boy announced.

"Why don't you let the man speak for himself, Jamey," the woman said, swaying slightly as she stood and squinted at Rimmer's face.

"We've met before, I'm sure of it. Janine Rimmer," she said, and held out a hand, which he took, still unable to stop staring. "I'm sorry if my children bothered you. They're usually better behaved."

"Oh, my God…" he gasped. "Oh, my God, it is you. This is really...you! I…I didn't see it at first, but now…"

He pulled his hand away and scanned the crowds around them, wrapped in an uncomfortable sense of dislocation.

"But…but this doesn't make sense. Frank's life was always so perfect: perfect grades, perfect career, perfect wife… Yet... Yet you seem so...so..."

"Oh yes," she said. "That's the Rimmer party line, isn't it? Here we are, top of the ziggurat: rich, successful, ambitious... Everything's perfect, all the time. And if you're not happy with that…"

She poured a fresh inch of wine into her glass and raised it toward Rimmer before drinking it down.

"So, where is Frank, anyway?" she asked, lowering herself gracefully back into the chair. The children climbed into a pair of chairs opposite her and began battling over the bowl of breadsticks at the center of the table. Rimmer glanced at them, wondering if he should step in, but Janine seemed oblivious. "Still schmoozing it up with the generals, I suppose? I told him not to sign up for this new project, that his children barely see him as it is. But, Frank is so utterly fixated on making captain before forty, like his brother, he volunteered just the same. What could I possibly say?"

"I...wouldn't know..."

Rimmer frowned, his thoughts and feelings reeling within him. This was not what he had expected to find: a lonely woman in obvious distress, two anxiously competitive children vying for just a moment of real attention...

It was all too familiar. All too real...

He felt his Ace persona twitching like a reflex, itching to take over, to comfort his brother's wounded family with a few smoothly spoken assurances... It would be so easy to slide back behind the mask, to let Ace take his place in the driver's seat…

But...

Something blocked the way, something deep and strong. A very old, very slow burning anger, rising and swelling like a spring tide. For most of Rimmer's life, this simmering anger had been directed inward, feeding a self-loathing so powerful it had, at times, threatened to overwhelm him completely. But now, after seeing the withering effects of his family's subtle, if insidious, dynamics on Janine, on her children...

Rimmer straightened and stepped forward. Awkwardly, he reached out and covered his sister-in-law's elegantly manicured hand with his.

"I'll go find Frank for you," he said, meeting her eyes. "You just stay here. OK?"

Janine looked back at him, her forehead creasing.

"I know I know you," she said. "What was your name again? Fletch? Fletcher?"

Rimmer shook his head.

"No," he said, and tapped at his nametag. "No, no, nope-a-roonie. My name is Arnold. Arnold Rimmer."

"Arnold?" Janine repeated, and shook her head. "Impossible. Arnold's just a boy."

"That's right, I was," Rimmer said, his expression hard and distant with memory. "But, not anymore. I've been gone a long, long…long, long time. But, I'm back now."

He smiled a very small smile and patted her hand.

"Hey, kids: save me a breadstick," he said, stepping away from the table and shooting the family a quick wink. "I'll be back for dinner."

Cinthy and Jamey stared curiously after Rimmer's departing back.

"Who was that, Mummy?" Cinthy asked. "I never heard of an Arnold Rimmer."

"I'm not really sure," Janine said, the dark shade that had fallen over her eyes seeming to lift just slightly. "But he seemed…nice…"

To Be Continued...


	12. Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Lister tilted his head back and let the cold lager flood over his taste buds, his chin…his shirt. After years spent drinking JMC generic brews and fermented urine recyc, the taste and feel of the real thing was like fresh air to a sewage processing tech who'd lost his filter mask. If he could just find a legit, Earth-brand cigarette—

"Over here," came a deep, plummy voice. "This must be one of them."

"Hey, you – in the ratty jacket," said a second voice, quite similar to the first. "Is it true? Did you come here with Simon Fletcher?"

Lister reluctantly lowered his pint glass to the bar and turned, only to find himself staring into the narrow, frowning faces of two uniformed officers who could only be Rimmer's older brothers.

"What's it to you?" he asked.

"Well, I just happen to have ol' Fletch on the line," the taller of the two said, holding out a pocket viewer. "Tell him where you are, Cousin."

The man on the little screen crossed his arms and said, "Where's it look like? I'm right here on base, just as I have been for the past four weeks. Whoever's crashed your shindig has got to be some ruddy impostor."

"Thanks, old man," the taller man said. He broke the link and shoved the viewer back in his pocket.

"So, old chum," he challenged, the pair of them closing in on Lister. "Care to offer up an explanation?"

"Why? What do you need explained?" Lister retorted.

The brothers advanced and grabbed Lister by the arms.

"How about trespassing," the older one said. "Impersonating a—"

"Hey, stop, get off me, man!" Lister protested, clinging to the bar stool with all his might. "No one impersonated anyone. It's your brother Frank who mistook our shipmate for your cousin. Check the sign-in, if you don't believe me. You'll see we're here with someone completely different!"

"One of the Family?" the shorter brother demanded.

"Who else?" Lister shot back.

"All right," the taller brother said, leaning in without easing his grip. "His name."

Lister smirked.

"Rimmer," he said.

The taller man cocked an eyebrow.

"Lookie here, Howie," he said, and wrenched Lister's wrist up behind his back. "Seems we've got ourselves a comedian."

"I'm serious," Lister said, wincing through the pain. "His name's Rimmer! Arnie J. Friends call 'im 'Ace.'"

"Never heard of him," Howard said.

Lister snorted.

"Seriously? You're seriously tellin' me you've never heard of Arnold J. Rimmer? Tallish, beady eyes? Hair that looks like somethin' you'd find cloggin' the sink?"

Howard and John shared a horrified look. John released Lister's arm and stepped back in disgust, wiping his hands on his uniform trousers as if Lister were contaminated by association.

"You can't mean…" Howard choked.

"But, isn't he supposed to be on Titan?" John demanded.

Howard shook his head.

"I don't know, and I don't care. All I do know is, if he is here, we can't let Mother see him. How did he find out about today's event? Did he actually get an invitation?"

John frowned, his high forehead furrowing.

"Frank," he said accusingly. "It has to be. Ever since he took that hush-hush assignment, there's been something off about him."

"You're right," Howard said. "He has been distracted. But still, it's not like Frank to drop the ball like this. Especially when it comes to that ungrateful, boneheaded twat!"

Lister squinted at them.

"That boneheaded twat's your kid brother, isn't he?"

John and Howard seemed to shudder.

"Not by choice," John said.

"No, certainly not," Howard agreed. "Little weasel's been an embarrassment from day one."

"Poor Mother's still never forgiven herself for keeping him in the first place," John muttered.

"Keepin' him?" Lister repeated. "What do you mean, keepin' him?"

Howard raised his eyebrows.

"You mean, you don't know?" he snorted. "The Bonehead was a mistake. A cuckoo!"

"Wrong egg in the right nest," John explained in response to Lister's blank expression.

"Right enough," Howard said. "Seems the genetics company screwed up and implanted an unenhanced embryo along with the designer child Mother had paid for. Once they realized, they offered to fix the mistake, no extra charge, but by then the little creep was already sixteen months old, and dear Mother just didn't have the heart to nuke him."

"It's her one weakness," John said. "That soft streak."

"She was so convinced nurture would win out over nature, if she could just be diligent enough. She sacrificed so much to ensure he had the strictest upbringing, the best education…"

"We all know how that turned out," John said, and wrinkled his nose. "Failure after failure, from start to finish. Then, after all the hard work she put in, the strings she pulled and deals she cut just to keep him in that high-powered school, the little turd has the nerve to take her and Father to court – demand full emancipation!"

Howard nodded his sympathy.

"They should have shipped him off to Earth, or some mining colony. Let him be raised by other Nehbees…"

"Nehbees?" Lister repeated the unfamiliar term.

"Non-Enhanced Human Beings," John spelled out, shooting him an arch look down his nose. "Don't tell me you're one of them."

"Wouldn't know," Lister said. "I was adopted meself."

The brothers took another step back.

"Right, I've heard enough," John said, pulling out his viewer and tapping at the screen. "We can't have these Nehbee reprobates running about, ruining our parents' big day. You and the rest of your gate-crashing cronies have a date with our guard house, my lad. The authorities will be along soon enough to evict the lot of you from our property."

He scowled down at the little device, and tapped the screen again.

"Damnit, Frank, pick up," he muttered.

"Something wrong?" Howard asked, peering over his shoulder.

"I can't get hold of Frank," John snapped, and turned his glare back to the bar. "We'll just have to- Wait… Where's he gone?"

The brothers circled the bar, each blaming the other for losing their quarry, but Lister had already melted into the crowd. He had to find Rimmer, had to warn him…

But Rimmer was nowhere to be seen. Cat and Kochanski seemed to be making quite a spectacle of themselves, however, so Lister adjusted his course and made a beeline straight for them.

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's all the already-written chapters I have for this story. Next one will be all new!
> 
> Next Time: Rimmer confronts Frank. What sort of top secret project did Frank sign up for? And what's going on with his arm? Stay Tuned! :)


	13. Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

"I'm going to kill him. I swear it, Computer," Rimmer muttered through clenched teeth, dodging and weaving through the milling party guests on his way back to the sign-in table where he'd last seen Frank. "I'm going to wrap my hands around the smarmy bastard's neck and squeeze 'till his eyes pop like the frog he so resembles. I'll—"

"Arnold, calm down," the Wildfire's voice sounded through his enhanced lightbee's inbuilt comlink. "You're very angry right now, and that's—"

"Damn right, I'm angry!" Rimmer snarled. "It's one thing for Frank and the rest to bully me. I was the youngest, the runt, the reject… But Janine! Beautiful, sensitive Janine… For Frank to freeze her out like this— It's so…so…mother!"

He fisted his hands so tightly, he felt his nails cut into his palms.

"I know what it is, Computer," he said. "It's because she's unenhanced. A Nehb Earth celebrity, struggling to fit in with the crème de la crème of the Outer Rim. I knew there'd been some trouble with Mother and Father when she and Frank started dating, but… Frank married her, he stood up to them! To slight her now…his children… I ought to knock him flat and have Lister sit on his face, the arrogant, bigoted, two-faced hypocrite! Where's he gone?"

"He's not where you left him?" the Wildfire asked.

"No. He's scarpered," Rimmer snapped, pounding his fist on the cluttered, unmanned table.

"Take a breath and let me run a scan," the Wildfire said calmly.

"I don't want to take a breath," Rimmer complained. "I want to murder my brother."

The Wildfire's voice conveyed a distinct smirk.

"Fratricide isn't exactly in keeping with the Ace legacy, you know."

"I thought you brought me here so I could break free of that smegging tether," Rimmer muttered darkly. "Forge an identity of my own…"

"Again, fratricide: not exactly the best place to build from. Well...unless you happen to be Romulus, perhaps. Ah—found him."

"So, where is the slimy reptile?" Rimmer demanded.

"Promise you'll behave yourself?"

Rimmer rolled his eyes.

"Just tell me where he is."

"Third floor, East Wing," she told him, and Rimmer turned straight toward the towering manor, fighting to contain his boiling temper and wondering at this startlingly strong need to actually face his brother.

Arnold Rimmer had always been a coward. It was one of his defining characteristics. When faced with danger of any sort, Rimmer had learned early on that the best course was to hightail it to a cozy hidey-hole and tremble there until the danger had passed…or at least been distracted by a different victim.

So, what the hell was he doing stalking up the marble steps and through the huge, French doors of the family manor, itching to confront the man who, more than any other, had worked and schemed and plotted to make his childhood a tortured misery? Was it Ace – some macho, protective drive carried over from the role? Or was it merely an impulsive burst of fury, fueled by memory and destined to crumple to panic and humiliation the moment he laid eyes on his brother again?

"Frank? Frank, I know you're here!" he shouted, his voice echoing in the soaring, cathedral-like foyer that buffered the main house from the gardens. Not that there was really any point to such a buffer, since there was no actual weather inside Io's domes. He turned into a corridor, where rich carpeting muted his calls.

"I saw Janine, Frank! I saw what you and this so-called 'Family' have done to her! Do you hear me, Frank?"

The severed heads of a variety of unfortunate animals lined the walls on both sides of the corridor: stags, boar, moose, squirrels, a gnu... These taxidermied heads had always given him horrible chills as a child, as if the dark, glass eyes were watching him, accusing him of atrocities he didn't commit. They gave him chills now, but this time, those watchful eyes felt more commiserative. Could it be that they knew he was dead now too: a skin of photons in the shape of Arnold Rimmer?

"Nonsense," Rimmer muttered uncomfortably and quickened his pace, heading for the main stairway to the east wing. His brothers had occupied the entire third floor there, when they weren't away at boarding school or, later, the academy.

"Impressive place, this," the Wildfire observed through the computer link they shared.

"Think so?" Rimmer grunted.

"You don't approve?" she asked him.

Rimmer snorted a cold, bitter laugh through his nose.

"Computer, I know every locked door and off-limits knick-knack in this house," he said. "There isn't a corner or corridor that doesn't resonate with memories."

He shook his head.

"I truly hate this place," he said, pausing mid-step to stare around at the sweeping architecture and magazine cover-perfect decor. "The ostentatious pretense, the false pomp and posed, affected superiority. Repressed dreams and subverted ambitions, that's what it's really all about. The glitter's just to distract important houseguests."

"Do your brothers feel the same way?"

"Don't know, don't care," Rimmer grunted, and continued his climb to the third floor. Leaving the elaborate curving staircase with its gold-plated banisters, he entered a wide, magisterial hall of veined, polished marble and plush, purple carpeting.

"By my software engineers!" the Wildfire gasped. "Was your bedroom also on this floor?"

"Not likely," Rimmer snarked, and snorted again. "I was never actually allowed near my brothers' rooms when they were growing up. My bedroom was a cylindrical eighth floor turret with small, low set windows and a very sharply sloped ceiling."

He paused for a moment, reflecting.

"Actually, it was kind of fun, having that small tower room all to myself. At least, it was when I was small. I remember spending hours up there, staring out at the gardens, Jupiter forever looming in the sky… 'S possibly why I always sought out the high observation dome whenever I needed to…escape…back on Red Dwarf," he realized, then shook his head, his expression pinched and angry.

"But by thirteen, I had to hunch my back just to get around in there, and I was always banging my head…"

He straightened his posture back to its customary arrow-like rigidity, as if in defiance of his cramped, restricted youth.

"Hear that?" the Wildfire asked.

Rimmer frowned, and listened to the distant sound of running water.

"So, he's here after all…"

Rimmer followed the sound to the second door on the right, his bitter feelings roiling and swelling within him as his mind again filled with memories he couldn't stop...

Frank, forcing his head into the downstairs servants' toilet and holding it there while John flushed and Howard laughed and cheered them on…

Frank, knocking him over from behind and looping a rope noose around his ankles so John and Howard could pull him into the air and leave him swinging, helpless and upside down, from a tree branch while they ran off to supper…

Frank, shoving him into a garden shed and locking the door, trapping him in the dark with a family of very territorial squirrels…

"If you don't mind my asking, Arnie," the Wildfire broke in. "Why are you so focused on Frank? Weren't your other two brothers just as bad?"

"Oh, they were," Rimmer said, his voice quieting to a whisper as he got closer to the door. "John was always the ringleader, the idea man who rarely got his hands dirty; Howard was his grinning lackey and occasional muscle; but Frank…"

He scowled, his eyes darkening dangerously.

"Frank was the closer, the one who got things done. Actually, I rather suspected that was why Frank ended up being the one selected for Special Services, rather than John or Howard – and why Frank was the one to snag a celebrity model for a girlfriend. He was a doer, an achiever, never hesitating to make a move or pausing to second-guess a command…"

Rimmer's bitter scowl deepened, and he knew his searing hatred for the man hadn't diminished one iota in three million-plus years. But then, neither had his hatred for himself, for never once standing up to the cold-blooded smegger.

Well, that was about to change…

"Better step back now, old girl," Rimmer advised his computer. "I'm going in."

"I trust you, Arnie," she said. "You can do this."

There was a slight crackle of static, and Rimmer felt he was alone. He sighed, a trickle of apprehension chilling its way up his spine.

He didn't have to do this. He didn't even have to tell Frank who he was. The idiot thought he was their cousin, for smeg's sake…and there was always Ace to hide behind if—

Rimmer shook his head, disgusted by the very thought. Maybe his family was right – maybe he was a loathsome, cowardly, boneheaded little worm. But, even a worm could turn…

Frank's door was ajar, so Rimmer pushed his way inside and made a beeline through the princely bedroom, following the sound of water to the bathroom.

"Oi, Frankie-boy," he called out and rapped his knuckles on the doorframe, smiling slightly at the startled splashing and gurgling he'd provoked. "You decent, or should I give you a moment to dress?"

"Gah—what? Who's there?" Frank gasped, coughing.

Rimmer leaned against the bedroom wall, out of sight, not particularly eager to catch a glimpse of his brother in the bath.

"Your wife was inquiring after you," he said.

"I'll bet she was," Frank muttered, still splashing and sloshing. "Well you can tell her from me, I- YII—EEEE GODS!"

His voice rose in unmistakable agony, and Rimmer dashed to his aid without thinking, only retroactively cursing the years of training that had instilled that Ace-ish impulse in his coward's heart.

"What's wrong? What happened?" he demanded, distantly envying the fact that Frank's bathroom featured a sunken, full-length Jacuzzi tub. "Stub your toe on the soap?"

"Get out of here!" Frank roared, clutching his arm and writhing among the jet stream bubbles. "I'm fine. This is just-GOD!"

He whimpered, and slammed his throbbing side and shoulders against the tub again and again, his narrow face a taut mask of pain.

Rimmer raised an eyebrow.

"If this is what you call 'fine,' miladdio, I'd hate to see what injured looks like," he commented, and slapped his hands against the tub's slippery edge, using it lever himself back to this feet. "But hey, if you want to be left alone with your torment, who am I to argue. Couldn't happen to a more deserving chap, whatever it is. I'll just tell Janine and the kids you won't be down for supper, shall I?"

"Wait…" Frank grunted. "That voice… That smarmy, nasal voice…"

The suffering man managed to still his anguished thrashing long enough to glare over his shoulder at the intruder.

"You're not Fletch…" he panted, his voice strained. "Who the hell are you?"

"Can you really not tell?" Rimmer asked curiously. "Surely I haven't changed all that much. Or, have I? It has been rather a long time since we've seen each other in the flesh…as it were…"

He glanced down at his hard-light fingers, then clasped his hands behind his back.

Frank tried to stand, but his legs gave out from under him and he fell back into the tub, water sloshing over the sides in waves.

"Oeeerrrggghhrrrgggllll…" bubbled his underwater groan.

Rimmer waited to see if Frank would surface, then waited a few moments longer, then longer still, crossing his arms and tapping his toe. Finally, he gave an exasperated sigh and strode through slippery puddles to turn off the Jacuzzi and haul his brother out of the steaming water.

"Leave me, leave me," Frank muttered, as Rimmer wrapped him in a fluffy, blue towel. "Just let me drown…"

Rimmer snorted.

"That certainly doesn't sound like the Frank Rimmer I know," he said. "Zipping up the ziggurat, lickety-split, all set to make captain before he hit thirty?"

"Better make that…thirty-five…now...if not...forty," Frank gasped, curled in a miserable hunch under his towel.

"Only if you survive that long," Rimmer commented. "What the smeg is going on here, Frank? And give me the truth, or I won't be able to help you."

"Who says I want your help?" Frank growled. "You haven't even said...who you are!"

"I'm here," Rimmer hedged, furious that the man didn't seem able, or willing, to figure it out. "And so are you. And you can't honestly tell me that this is normal. Or, is your left arm supposed to be longer and larger than your right?"

"What…?"

Frank shook his arm free of the towel and stared, slowly bending and unbending long, knobby fingers that looked more ape-like than human. As the two of them watched, Frank's knuckles sprouted coarse, brown hair – thick, fur-like hair that traveled up his arm, across his shoulders, and down his back.

"Good God, Frank…" Rimmer gasped. "What have you—?"

Frank roared in agony, clutching his legs and rolling to his side. His muscles twitched and spasmed beneath his skin, his bones seeming to spread wider, grow longer, his cheekbones sharpening, his ears stretching…

Rimmer staggered back, a hand pressed over his gaping mouth. He'd seen this before – not the transformation, but the end result.

Commander Frank Rimmer...his brother…was a GELF.

To Be Continued…


	14. Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

"Commander Harris, sir," Lt. Barton said, "according to Ensign Palmer's report, these miners have already taken three asteroid belt stations and two more are currently under threat."

"I've heard enough, Lieutenant."

"But sir," the young man pressed, "If we don't send out ships, and soon, what started as a minor act of sabotage by a handful of malcontents could quickly morph into a full-blown uprising! I know this is the Admiral's anniversary dinner, sir, but if the miners should manage to contact Earth with their grievances, the media attention alone…"

Lt. Barton closed his eyes and took a breath, fighting to keep his tone level and steady.

"Commander, I believe, at the very least, we should warn General Metzeler. As the report suggests, those experimental injections of hers could very well be responsible for the—"

"Barton, I said that's enough," Lt. Commander Harris barked.

The skinny officer swallowed and snapped to attention, realizing that, by mentioning The Project out in the open – on a crowded veranda, no less – he had far overstepped his bounds.

"Sir!"

"Now," the commander said in a low, firm voice. "Our standing orders state that Admiral Rimmer is not to be disturbed until the reception is over – or, at least, until the cake is sliced and served. I'm sure this so-called 'uprising' will keep for another hour or so. Leave your report with Commander Frank Rimmer, then return to Io Base and inform Ensign Palmer she is to keep silent and wait for backup to arrive. Understood?"

"Understood, sir."

"You are dismissed."

"Aye, sir," Barton said.

The two officers saluted, and Barton marched away, dodging through the milling crowds chatting, sipping champagne, and sampling from trays of caviar blinis and chocolate-dipped strawberries while pointedly ignoring the service droids who carried them from person to person, group to group.

This affected, practiced pretense of staring past and through the robotic wait staff was why it was so easy for Lt. Commander Harris to completely ignore the rather bulky, awkward-looking server with the particularly angular head when the droid proffered out his tray. It's also why no one saw the snubbed mechanoid irritably mince after the commander with his tray held out, or noticed him eavesdropping – in a rather theatrical, exaggerated manner – on the commander's brief, yet highly animated, conversation with General Metzeler and Admiral Rimmer's sons, John and Howard.

As the general gestured for John, Howard, and Lt. Commander Harris to follow her into the main house, the snooping droid set down his tray, pressed his bulging eyes back into his rubber-tipped head, and shuffled off at top speed to find his companions...

*******

"Kris!" Lister called, waving his arms for her attention. "Krissie, quick, grab the Cat! Where's Kryten?"

"Last I saw, he'd gotten himself sucked into serving hors d'oeuvres at the main table," Kochanski said, shooting the panting Lister a suspicious look. "What's going on?"

"Rimmer's brothers," Lister said, leaning against the wrought-iron bandstand as he caught his breath. A quintet of faintly flickering soft light holograms sat at the center of the elegant structure, playing bland, tuneless tunes on their holographic instruments. They looked anxious, even desperate, as if their runtime depended on their performance. And, Lister reflected grimly, perhaps it did.

"John and Howard. They're on to us, an' Rimmer too," he warned. "So, we've gotta find him first. If he's to confront his family, he'll have to do it now, or the Ionian authorities will be fittin' us all for silver bracelets, if you catch my meaning..."

"What? How did this happen? What did you do?"

"Me?" Lister exclaimed, all innocence. "I was jus' havin' a drink at the bar, minding me own business. It was those two—"

"No, don't bother explaining," she snapped, firing a fierce, exasperated glare at Lister's food-and-beer soaked clothing. "I can smell for myself what tipped them off!"

Kochanski sighed tiredly, and shook her head.

"Truth to tell, I should have expected this. I should have known that, after all this time in deep space, you would be incapable of socializing with real people."

Lister drew himself up.

"An', what's that supposed to mean, 'real' people?"

"It means human beings, Lister," she said angrily. "Mature, intelligent men and women who can tell an aria from a sneeze. Who know the difference between crème fraîche and sour cream!"

Lister bristled.

"Are we honestly going to start this again – here? Now?" he exclaimed. "Crem fresh. Sour cream," he mocked in a sing-song voice. "Who the smeg cares!"

"There! That attitude! That is exactly what I'm talking about!"

"Why? Jus' because I don't buy your snobbish notion that callin' something a French name magically makes it better than—"

"Ms. Kochanski, ma'am! Mr. Lister, sir!"

Kryten shuffled into their argument and stood wringing his hands.

"What is it Kryters?" Lister asked.

"Oh, sir," Kryten squeaked anxiously. "I've overheard something…terrible!"

"So? Stop wasting time and spill it," Kochanski ordered.

If Kryten had been human, the look he shot her would have been classified as 'bitterly resentful.' His shoulders rose and tensed until the mechanoid looked like a turtle trying to force his too-big head down into his metal shell.

"Why does he always do this…?" Kochanski said. "Is something wrong with your central processor?"

"No, ma'am, my processing unit is just fine," Kryten said snippily. "It's just that sometimes… Sometimes…!"

"Sometimes what?" Kochanski demanded. "Is it me? You can't seriously still resent the fact that I am – however unwillingly – a part of this crew."

The way Kryten seemed to be holding his breath made Lister step forward in alarm.

"Cool it, Krytes, or you'll blow your stack. An' we don't have any spare heads around for you to swap," Lister warned, and clapped a hand on the mechanoid's angular shoulder. "No worries, man, I know where you're comin' from."

Kryten took several deep breaths, then nodded.

Kochanski crossed her arms and glared at Lister, who shot her his cheekiest smile in return.

"Thank you, sir," Kryten said. "I'm all right now."

"Your news, circuits-for-brains?" Kochanski said irritably.

"What about the Cat?" Lister said. "Shouldn't he be here for this?"

They glanced over to where the Cat lay curled contentedly on a table, cooing women feeding him grapes, and shared a shrug.

"He seems all right for now. We can always fill him in later…when we find Rimmer, wherever he went," Kochanski muttered.

"Ah - wait..."

Lister straightened, already digging out his commutations device.

"His lightbee's got a comlink. We can get the Wildfire to contact him."

"All right, contact him. Tell him to get his holographic butt back to this party before the Wildfire's whole plan is blown," Kochanski said, scanning the area. "There's an empty table over by the gardens. We can talk there."

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: What's going on with Rimmer's brother and that experimental 'project'? Will Rimmer be able to help Frank, and confront his parents, without falling back on his Ace persona? The action's about to heat up as this story moves into its final phase. Stay tuned! :)


	15. Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Rimmer sucked in his cheeks and gave his head a shake, his ears still ringing from his brother's terrible howls.

"Well," he said dryly, "if that doesn't attract attention—"

"Get out!" Frank roared, saliva dripping from his fangs as he surged to his Yeti-like feet and advanced, his orangutan-like arms swinging wildly. "Get the hell away from me! I don't want anyone looking at me!"

Rimmer glared, the hot, molten anger roiling in his gut blocking any inclination to cringe or back away. This building outrage demanded confrontation, and he'd dealt with enough lumbering GELF warriors in his time as Ace to know their general weaknesses. And, in his current emotional state, Frank was particularly clumsy.

"What are you going to do, you muscle-bound gorilla?" he taunted, keeping well out of range of those long, sweeping arms. "You can't very well stay locked away in the toilet for the rest of your life! And, what about Janine?"

Frank fisted his hands, and let out another tortured, throaty roar.

"Ah, so you remember her," Rimmer sneered, rubbing at his ears. "She and the children are waiting out there now, for a husband and father they've barely seen for – how long is it, Frank? A day? A month? Or has the neglect gone on longer than that?"

"What do you care?" Frank howled. "What business is it of yours!"

"Read the nametag, laddie," he said, primly tapping the sticker with his finger. "You laughed when I wrote this. But, it may just offer up a clue."

The hulking GELF squinted his beady eyes as he slowly read: "Arnold J.—"

He snarled and stepped back, looking the older man up and down.

"Impossible," he snapped.

"More impossible than a decorated commander in the Space Corps Special Service transforming into a hideously hirsute genetically warped monstrosity right here, on the Italian marble floor?" Rimmer challenged, and crossed his arms.

"But— But, Arnold…! He's a… While you—"

Rimmer arched his nostrils and clenched his jaw, his boiling anger lowering back to a simmering seethe.

"You don't have to believe me," he said haughtily, "any more than those partygoers outside have to believe you when you try to explain who you are. That doesn't change the fact that we grew up together. You, John, Howard and me. Brothers, if not in practice, then at least in name and, at the very least, a shared upbringing and heredity."

Frank growled.

"It doesn't matter if I believe you or not," he grumbled, awkwardly wrapping his towel around his thick, furry gut and turning to face the mirror. "The Project is classified. I'm sworn not to speak a word. To anyone."

Rimmer's thin lips tightened, and he moved closer, reaching out a hand to touch his brother's hulking shoulder.

"Listen to me, Frank," he said. "I'm in the Space Corps, same as you. I know the rules and regulations we're sworn to live by. But, unlike you, I've seen where this 'project' of yours will lead."

"What do you mean?" Frank rumbled dangerously.

"I mean I've been around, my lad," Rimmer told him. "I've traveled well beyond our solar system, met all manner of Genetically Engineered Life Forms from this reality and dozens of others. I've traded with them, fought with them. A friend of mine once even married one. But, I never would have imagined the GELF race had its start here in the past – with my own big brother!"

"The past?" Frank frowned down at him. "Then…you've—"

"Come back from the future?" Rimmer said, and snorted a little laugh. "Quite right. And I want to help you, brother. You and your family. If you'll let me."

Frank's warped features grew deeply wary.

"If you are that bonehe—" He snuffled a cough, then tried again. "That is, if you are, indeed, our dear Arnold, all grown up… Why the smeg would you want to help me? We never got on as children. Hell, none of the Family has so much as seen you since you took Mother and Dad to court at fourteen to sue for your emancipation!"

"Successfully, I might add," Rimmer said archly. "The courts ruled in my favor. Even then, it took literally millennia before I was able to acknowledge, let alone confront, the grievous psychological damage you lot inflicted on me as a child. I won't say I'm over it, because I'm not, but I do know this."

He took a breath, and fixed his brother's gaze with his own.

"I've been trained to spot injustice, and to challenge it whenever and wherever I can," he said. "It wasn't my choice, really. I was recruited to play the role against my will. But, I've been doing this hero lark for a while, now. And, after seeing what this family of ours has done to you – to Janine and the kids…"

He shook his head and turned away, his eyes falling on his reflection in the mirror. His, and Frank's. The boy who'd run, and the boy who'd stayed…who'd followed every order without question, who'd climbed the ziggurat as they'd all been coached…

But, at what cost…?

"Can it be that I was the lucky one?" he whispered. "To break away, to blunder along my own path out there in deep space… While you, Janine, and all the rest – you're still trapped under this dome, locked up in Mother's hateful little world of pomp and prejudice…"

Rimmer swallowed, his mind whirling with difficult, conflicting realizations.

"These damn feelings…" he croaked. "They're inside me now. They've become part of…of who I am. Smeg knows, I've tried to fight it, even to deny it—"

His voice steadied, and he stared back at his brother, his dark eyes intense with renewed purpose.

"But, I can't walk away from this, Frank, and just leave you to it. You need help. This smegging nightmare we call a family needs help, and I – I have to offer it. It's my duty, Frank. My duty as your brother, as current commander of the Wildfire, and yes…"

He straightened his shoulders and raised his chin, his entire profile seeming to change as the sunlight reflecting off of Jupiter made the window behind him glow with warm, unearthly light.

"It's my duty as Arnold J. Rimmer." He smiled. "'Ace' to you."

Frank stared wide-eyed at the man standing before him, the transformation he'd just witnessed as startling in its own way as Frank's yeti-like reflection.

"Come now," Ace said, leading his hulking brother to the plush chairs in the next room. "Sit down. I need you to tell me everything."

*******

"What's taking so long?" Lister demanded as he, Kochanski and Kryten perched anxiously around their distant table, their eyes scanning the crowds for any sign of John or Howard. "Shouldn't the Wildfire have made contact with Rimmer by now?"

"Let me see," Kochanski said, reaching for Lister's comm unit. "Still getting that busy signal. Do you think he's all right?"

The little unit bleeped, and the Wildfire's sultry voice came through.

"Communications reestablished," she announced. "And I think we've made real progress! Arnie's had it out with his brother, Frank, and—"

Lister leaned over the table and snatched the comm unit from Kochanski's hand, speaking before she could protest.

"That's great an' all," he said, "but we've got a problem of our own! The other two brothers are on to us – and to Rimmer as well. They know who we are, and they're out to eject us. You gotta tell Rimmer: if he's gonna face his folks, he's got to do it now or never."

The comm unit crackled, and Rimmer's voice came through.

"I hear you loud and clear, Listy," he said. "Frank and I will be down momentarily. We have something of a surprise in store for Mother dear…and her friend, General Metzeler."

"Glad to hear it," Lister said, "but there's more. Kryten overheard that general woman talkin', an' it looks like there's some trouble brewin' in the Outer Rim. Seems the general's got this secret project goin', where they've been injectin' miners with this serum. Kryten thinks—"

"Don't tell me, Listy, I already know," Rimmer said grimly. "This is worse than I expected. And to think that Mother would volunteer her own son to—" He cut himself off. "Lister, where is General Metzeler now?"

"I think she's out lookin' for you," Lister said. "An' she's got John and Howard with her."

"Right, then," Rimmer said. "We'll have to act fast. Frank, when is the cake-cutting ceremony scheduled to take place?"

Instead of Frank's plummy voice, a low, rumbling, oddly slurred baritone responded, prompting the Dwarfers to share a bewildered look.

"In the next fifteen minutes," the heavy voice said.

"Tickety-boo," came Rimmer's reply, and Lister smirked. "Don't worry, lads, I've got a plan. The cover's coming off this scheme and, for once, Mother-dearest is going to be forced to face the consequences of her own cold-hearted bigotries. It's time we proved to her, and all those highly polished brass nobs out there stuffing their faces: genetic enhancement does not automatically equal superiority – not intellectually, and certainly not as a human being. But, enough of this rant. Save me a sandwich, I'll be down for coffee."

The comm channel closed, and Lister looked confusedly up at Kochanski and Kryten.

"Was that Rimmer?" he asked. "Or has Ace taken over again?"

"I may be wrong, sir," Kryten said, "but it sounds to me as if Mr. Rimmer is the one 'taking over,' as it were."

Lister raised his eyebrows.

"Well, if that's the case, then we have to help him," he said.

"How can we do that if we're stuck here, hiding from security?" Kochanski asked, shooting Lister a rather accusing glare.

"Easy enough," Lister said, returning her glare with a cheeky smile. "We quit this hiding, an' go on the offensive. I'm sick of bein' the mouse, anyway. If they want to play this game, better to be the hunter than the prey."

"I'm with you, buddy," the Cat said, striding up from the side with a huge, happy grin stretched across his face. "I don't know what you guys are talkin' about, but it's got the right theme. It's always better to be a cat than a mouse."

"Cat!" Lister greeted happily. "I thought you were off playin' celebrity."

"There's only so much of that kind of attention a Cat can take," Cat said. "So, I came to see what you monkeys were up to."

"Then, you're just in time," Lister said, gesturing for him to sit down. "There's a big scheme brewin'. Seems like Rimmer's mum the admiral an' this general friend of hers have hatched a plan to create these super soliders, right? They call the project GESS - Genetically Enhanced Super Soldiers, get it? But, they've been testin' the injections on miners out in the Outer Rim, an' now the mutatin' side-effects are makin' those miners start to rebel. Looks to me like we're witnessin' the very start of the GELFs."

"So?" Cat asked. "What's that got to do with me?"

"You're here to help us," Kochanski said. "And we're here to help Rimmer so Rimmer and his ship can help me get home."

Lister rolled his eyes, but a quick glare from Kochanski turned his smirk into a sigh.

"Now," she said, "Rimmer says he has a plan to confront his mother and the general about this GESS project. But, the general and Rimmer's brothers are after us. That's where you come in," she said to the Cat, and smiled. "A cat to catch three mice."

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include - Red Dwarf: Emohawk; Dimension Jump; Better Than Life; Polymorph; Camille.
> 
> Until next time, thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter! :D


	16. Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! The chapter before the concluding chapter that comes before the epilogue! Please let me know what you think! :D

Chapter Fifteen

General Metzeler stationed Lt. Commander Harris at the foot of the main staircase, then followed John and Howard up to Frank's bedroom.

"Frank!" John snapped as he strode through the open door, followed closely by Howard. "Frank, are you here? What the devil has gotten into you, old man! You've had us scouring half the bloody dome for you while the general—"

He poked his head into the bathroom and immediately trailed off.

"Good grief, what a mess," Howard said, peering past his brother's shoulder at the still steaming tub, the heaped and sopping towels, all the water puddled on the marble floor… "Did a cherry bomb go off in here?"

"Not hardly," the general said grimly and sank to one knee, tracing her fingers over a trail of sloppy water drips and sodden footprints soaking through the thick, blue carpet.

"What the hell…?" John frowned down at the oversized prints. "Was Frank in here dancing with Bigfoot?"

"Damn it…"

The general grunted, and hefted herself back to her feet.

"What's wrong?" John asked.

"Do you know what's happened to Frank?" Howard followed.

The general pursed her lips, regarding the two men for a long, penetrating moment before she said, "I'm afraid it's like this, boys. From the looks of these footprints here, I'd say Commander Frank Rimmer has been taken – snatched by one of those malcontent rebels from the Outer Rim."

"But…how?" Howard sputtered. "There's no way those miners could have breached the security of our dome—"

John placed a hand on Howard's shoulder.

"Howie," he said. "Those Nehbee intruders. We knew they had to be up to something."

"Then…what? You think they're here as some sort of advance party?" Howard asked, goggling at his brother like a gape-mouthed codfish. "Sent as spies to sabotage Mother's big day?"

"Quite right, Lieutenant. Got it first try," the general said, and straightened. "Activate your tightest security fields, boys. I want those intruders in custody and ready to talk before—"

"No need for all that trouble, mates," a voice interrupted. "We're happy to chat right here."

Lister stepped into the doorway, flanked by Kochanski and Kryten.

"You!" John exclaimed. "What have you Nehbs done with our brother, Frank?"

"Nehb indeed," Kochanski scorned and flipped back her perfect hair. "But, we're not the ones to ask about that. Why don't you try her?" She fixed her dark glare on General Metzeler.

"What is this? Who are you?" the general demanded angrily. "What kind of game are you people playing!"

"We're not the ones playing games here, General," Rimmer said, stepping out from Frank's spacious walk-in closet with one hand resting casually on his utility belt.

John and Howard shared a confused look, staring from Rimmer to each other, then back again.

"Fletch?" Howard squinted. "But... But how...?"

"That can't be Fletcher," John said. "We talked with him not twenty minutes ago!"

"Sure looks like ol' Fletch, though," Howard said, and frowned. "Or would, if he were about five years older."

"The name's Arnold," Rimmer informed them, tapping a finger against his nametag. "Ace, to you. But who I am is not important just now. Frank?"

He gestured to someone in the closet, holding out his arm in support as slowly, slowly, his hulking brother lumbered into view.

"What is this?" John said dangerously. "What are you lot trying to pull?"

"General?" Rimmer prompted. "Would you care to take this one? No, wait, better to let Frank tell you himself. The way General Metzeler has been seeding the ground with deflection and blame, I get the feeling she's more inclined to cover her precious Project's arse than tell the truth about what her Super Soldier serum has done to Frank – and to those miners in the Outer Rim!"

"I don't have to stand for this," Metzeler snarled, turning to John and Howard. "These people are clearly subversives, kidnappers, and terrorists. Captain! Lieutenant! Take them and their genetic monster down to the security office and—"

"Not so fast, Dog Breath! In case you hadn't noticed, we've got you surrounded!"

The Cat gracefully dropped down from the comfortable, hammock-like canopy draped over Frank's princely bed, grinning the grin of a highly evolved Cat aiming a fully charged laser blaster at his prey.

Lister and Kochanski pulled blasters too, while Kryten hefted an oversized bazookoid over his shoulder.

"We made a quick pit stop in the Weapons Storage room," Lister explained through his own gerbil-like smirk as Rimmer and Frank patted the prisoners down for weapons.

Howard shrieked and shrank back as Frank approached him.

"Don't you touch me," he cried. "Don't you let that thing touch me!"

"Hey, keep still, buddy," Cat said. "Don't you know your own brother?"

"That mutant is no relation of ours!" Howard exclaimed, shuddering at the very idea. "How dare you even suggest that – that—"

He sputtered, too outraged to finish the thought.

John glared.

"You terrorists have the gall to break in here, into our home, and insult our family? Our bloodline—!"

"They're not terrorists, Howard," Frank rumbled. "And, they're right. I know I don't look it, but I am your brother, Frank Rimmer. I was 'volunteered' for the GESS program about six months ago by our own dear Mother. Six months of genetic treatments, weekly injections… This is the result."

He held out his long, furry arms in demonstration, his deep, brown eyes looking to each of his brothers in turn. But, if Frank had hoped to find a trace of warmth in their twisted expressions, he was sorely disappointed.

"I don't believe it," John said darkly.

"Neither do I," Howard quickly seconded.

"Of course you don't. It's a load of nonsense," Metzeler said, staring Frank right in the eye. "This is clearly a ploy designed to distract us – to give the rest of their little group of malcontents time to break their way into orbit!" Her expression fell in pitying condescension. "When will you frontier colonists learn, you can't go blaming the Space Corps for every accident that—

"This was no accident!" Frank roared, but Rimmer grabbed his flailing arm.

"Hey, hey, easy now," he said. "We're not getting anywhere this way. I think it's time we take this little show outside. What do you say, gang?"

"I say we've got 'em covered," Lister said, readjusting his blaster with the cocky skill of an AR champ. "Let's go."

*******

The trip down the hall went smoothly enough, with the three captives remaining docile as the Dwarfers escorted them down the first two flights of stairs.

It was the last flight to the ground level where things got dicey.

"Whoa – where did all those soldiers come from?" Cat said, looking down at the sea of uniforms crowding the atrium's polished floor. Lt. Commander Harris waited on the first step, standing smugly at attention.

General Metzeler smiled and tapped her smart watch.

"Should have confiscated this when you had the chance…Ace," she taunted as she, John and Howard strode down the remaining stairs to join her troops.

"What do we do now, Ace?" Lister asked. "Somehow, I doubt these blasters can hold up to all that firepower."

Rimmer didn't hesitate.

"Kryten, you've hobnobbed with the servers. By any chance, did they show you the servant stairs and hallways?"

"They did, sir," Kryten said. "But only in the back, near the kitchen."

"Not a problem," Rimmer said. "In this smegging house, all servant doors look the same. On Father's orders, they were always closed, never locked. Made it easier for him to sneak out on his squirrel hunts..." He quickly shook away the memories. "Now, when I give the signal, I want the rest of you to follow Kryten back to the second floor. He'll show you a way out."

"But, Ace," Kochanski protested, "what about you?"

"Don't worry about me, kiddo," Rimmer said and winked, his image flickering slightly as he switched the projection from hard light to soft light. "Just get Frank to Mother and Dad in time for the cake-cutting ceremony. I'll meet you there."

Kochanski seemed to swallow a protest, blinking several times before she nodded her understanding.

"Got it, Ace."

"Well?" the general prompted. "Will you lot come quietly? Or, would you rather play at being practice targets for my men?"

"If those are the choices," Rimmer said, "then I pick C: None of the above. Roast me a turkey," he called back to the Dwarfers, "I'll be home for Christmas."

With that, Rimmer let out a wild yell and charged down the stairs, his projected image passing straight through General Metzeler, Howard, John, then a host of very startled soldiers as his lightbee hovered, unseen, just ahead and above the crowd.

"Smeggin' hell, it's a ghost!" the soldiers cried.

"No way, it's some rogue hologram!"

"Can't have a hologram without holoprojectors – you see any holoprojectors here?"

"Then, it really is a ghost!"

"Who the smeg cares what it is? Just shoot the damn thing!"

The panicked commotion among Metzeler's soldiers effectively covered the Dwarfers' escape up the stairs as sizzling laser bolts slalomed around the picture-perfect atrium, stunning and wounding dozens with friendly fire without ever touching their intended target. By the time the general, John, Howard, and Harris finally managed to reestablish some semblance of order, Frank and the Dwarfers were well out of the building.

And, so was Ace Rimmer.

"Damn it," the general rumbled, her face purpling like an overripe fig. "Damn it all to hell!"

"Don't worry, General," John said, grabbing up a pair of blasters from the floor beside some writhing wounded soldiers and tossing one to Howard. "Set laser to kill," he ordered his brother. "Those Nehbee terrorists and their pet mutant won't spoil Mother's big moment. I swear it."

To Be Concluded!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay Tuned, and Please Review! :D


	17. Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

It began out beyond Neptune, among the icy objects of the Kuiper Belt, where multi-generational colony vessels mined ore for transport by ships licensed by the Space Corps' Jupiter Mining Corporation.

A signal of warning, sent by a four-man Space Corps patrol scout, lit up transmitters on Triton Base. Minutes later, blinking blue, red and yellow lights cut through the darkness of Narvi, the droids there passing the coded alarm on to Mimas and Titan, to Amalthea and Ganymede, Europa and Io, then on to Mars:

ATTN: COMMAND. REPORT SUSPECTED HIJACKING. SIX SPACE CORPS PATROL SHIPS SPOTTED OFF COURSE, FLYING TOGETHER AT TOP SPEED. TRAJECTORY INDICATES A HEADING DIRECTED TOWARDS JUPITER, ETA IN 11.39 HOURS. NO RESPONSE TO REPEATED HAILS, BUT SENSORS SHOW ALL SHIPS FULLY ARMED. REQUEST—

And, abruptly, the signal stopped.

*******

_11.22 Hours Later..._

Arnold Rimmer reactivated his hard-light drive and leaned against a thick, marble pillar at the back of the main house, trembling all over as he slid down to a crouch and pressed his forehead against his knees.

"Arnie?" the Wildfire computer queried. "Arnie, your vitals are spiking like mad. Are you all right?"

Rimmer shook his head, sucking in air like a middle-aged businessman who'd sprinted for, but failed to catch, his morning bus.

"No," he said. "No, Computer, I'm not all right. You know how much I hate phasing through things – and people especially! I know, I know, it's probably all in my mind. But, every time it's like…like I can feel them passing through me. Their skin, their pulse, their scent, the heat of their bodies… Yiiick!"

He shuddered even more violently, then leaned his head back against the marble.

"God…" he moaned. "I really am a ghost." He snorted darkly and stared up at the looming mansion. "A dead man from the future, returned to haunt his past…"

"Don't you start that," the Wildfire said. "You behaved like a real hero in there, Arnold. You saw a trap and you acted at once to protect your brother and your friends – all without a thought to what it might cost you."

"That's as may be," Rimmer grunted, standing up and beginning to pace, mostly to help shake off the skittery tingle still tickling his spine. "But honestly, Computer, what can I hope to accomplish here? Janine is out there right now, waiting for a husband who looks more like King Kong's stumpy, half-melted cousin than the dashing officer she married. John and Howard may as well be welded to that General Metzeler loon for all the concern they've shown. And my parents…"

He blew out a harsh breath and shook his head.

"Sure, I can march out there as Ace. Confront the pair of them about Frank and that general's mad experiments. But, the moment they realize what I am…what I let myself become…"

He closed his eyes and swallowed, hard.

"I've told you how they feel about the dead...how they trained me and my brothers to feel… They firmly believe that holograms are a waste of photons. And, don't think I can keep that little nugget about my non-living status to myself, Computer, not after what I just did back there. Even without that smegging H branded onto my forehead, they'll still be able to tell. They'd smell it on me, somehow, like bloodhounds nosing a dead skunk."

"You could explain to them that, because of the nature of the brain scan you underwent, your hologram is actually—"

"Ha! You can't explain a hologram's nature to a couple of zealots," Rimmer retorted, and growled. "What do you expect me to do, Computer? Sidle up to them and say 'Hey! Remember me? I'm the son who divorced you to follow his own path up the ziggurat of command, only to die a lowly Second Tech who wasted what little life he had servicing chicken soup machines on some rusty, oversized, clapped out mining ship! Sure, my hologram eventually learned how to be a dimension-hopping Ace, but only three million years after my flesh and blood body was flash-charred to radioactive ash.'"

He snorted.

"Even if I did, they wouldn't listen. I may know I'm me, you may know I'm me, but to them… To them, a hologram isn't a person. To them, a hologram is just a program, a digital copy: a computer-generated simulation in the shape of an ex-human being."

He moved back to the pillar and sank down again.

"It's no good, Computer," he muttered. "I appreciate what you tried to do for me…returning to my home dimension, bringing me here… But, I can't fix this. I can't undo what's been done to Frank, to Janine – to any of us. Smeg…" He sighed. "I doubt even the original Ace could guide this fiasco to a positive conclusion."

"Have you tried?" the Wildfire asked.

"What?" Rimmer scowled. "What do you mean, 'have I tried'? Of course I've tried! You just said—"

"I said you behaved like a hero back there. That doesn't mean you've finished your task. Not by any means."

"My task," Rimmer repeated blankly.

"The task you set yourself, Arnie," the Wildfire said. "You know what needs to be done. And, I know, deep down, beneath all the doubt and fear that's bubbling around in your guts right now, you actually want to do it. You've wanted this for a long, long, long, long time."

Rimmer pressed his lips together and arched his nostrils.

"If I do this, it's bound to backfire," he said. "Everything always does for me."

"Then, you have the advantage," the Wildfire said. "Don't you."

Rimmer snorted.

"I'm serious, Arnie," she said. "Think about it. You've had your life literally blow up in your face. You've slammed head-on into practically every barricade, diversion and minefield that's lurked in ambush between you and your goals. No one paved the way for you to get to where you are. You railed and you struggled and, in the end, you faced down your setbacks and cut out a path for yourself. Which of your brothers can say the same?"

"Hmm," Rimmer grunted. "Somehow, I suspect most of that 'facing down setbacks' malarkey has more to do with your relentless training schedules than anything that came from me. And, for all that railing and struggling you spoke of, just where would you say I stand on this rough-hewn path to my so-called 'goals'? Despite Ace, despite all my adventures with you, I never did make it to the top of Mother's precious ziggurat of command. In this universe, my home universe, I'm just a private, a second tech. And, a dead one to boot. Hardly the résumé to impress my parents…"

"You're here, Arn," she said. "With me, and with your friends. You're here for Frank and his family, for John and Howard—"

"And for myself, I suppose," Rimmer said dryly and sighed, looking down at his flight suit as he rose slowly to his feet. "Still…"

He pulled his lightbee remote from his pocket and frowned, as if weighing a decision in his palm. A quick adjustment, and Rimmer stood straight in the uniform he had died in, the well-polished insignia of a Second Technician gleaming on his starched, gray shoulder loops.

"Well. It's time to see if the legend can stand without the wig and costume," he said, his leg jiggling and his protuberant Adam's apple bobbing nervously as he smoothed a hand over his short, wire-brush hair. "I suppose I asked for this, didn't I..."

He snapped his heels together and straightened his shoulders.

"How do I look, Computer?"

"Ace," she said sincerely, and he actually smiled. A real smile, if a touch resigned.

"Where are the others?" he asked.

"Making their way towards the main dais overlooking the gardens," she told him. "They'll be presenting the cake any moment now."

"Then, I guess this is it," he said, and straightened his already straight tie. "Wish me luck, Computer."

"Good luck, Arnie," she said with genuine warmth, and his pinched expression softened.

"You want me to say it?" he teased her.

"Only if you mean it," she teased right back.

"Then, smoke me a kipper," he said, and flashed a quick grin. "I'll be back for breakfast."

Their comlink cut, Ace marched swiftly toward the far side of the building, the Wildfire following him with her sensors as she sighed, "What a guy."

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Easter! :D I know I was planning to have this be the concluding chapter but, unfortunately, shifting weather triggered a stupid migraine attack. grrrr...! Luckily, it's started to fade in time for the holidays, but it has knocked my writing plans off track. So, rather than wait to post the whole conclusion, which may take at least another couple of weeks (upcoming family parties, etc.) I split the final chapter up and I'll be posting it in bits like this one. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading! Your reviews are always appreciated and more than welcome! :D


	18. Chapter Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Here's another piece of the final act of this story! Sorry I've been taking so very long getting this conclusion written. I really wanted my first post from my brand new computer to be the finale of this story, but with so little time to write lately it was just taking too long to pull it off. So, here's the middle section of the last part before the Epilogue. I hope you enjoy it! :)

Chapter Seventeen

While Rimmer marched dutifully past the mansion's border hedge toward the soaring party tents and expansive marble dais where his parents held court, John and Howard held their weapons close, their eyes scanning the clusters of prominent guests and gossip-hungry reporters for any sign of their quarry.

"They shouldn't be this hard to spot," Howard complained, grabbing a handful of hors d'oeuvres from a passing droid's tray. "A ratty group of space bums like that would never blend into this crowd. Maybe they're still in the house?"

John reached over and plucked the miniature quiche and sausage rolls from his brother's hand, absently popping them in his own mouth before Howard could think to protest.

"Harris and the general have gone to monitor the security system," John spoke around his mouthful. "If those saboteurs are anywhere inside, they'll spot them." He swallowed. "Still, though we may have superior tech on our side, we shouldn't forget what mother says."

"What does she say?"

"'Even apes use tools,'" John quoted. "Translation: those Nehbees can be pretty cunning when they want to be. Ah—!" He pointed toward the marble dais with his blaster. "And there they are…"

*******

"I still say these disguises just ain't gonna work!" the Cat protested, pulling irritably at the high, starched collar of the white pastry chef's coat that (mostly) concealed his own flashy ensemble.

"It won't if you keep taking off your chef hat!" Lister said, snatching the tall, pleated baker's toque from Cat's hands and shoving it down over his meticulously styled pompadour.

The Cat hissed and ducked away.

"Hey, monkey, watch the hair!"

"Keep it down," Kochanski snapped from behind them. "If anything gives us away, it'll be your puerile bickering, not these outfits!"

"Easy for you to say, bud," the Cat said. "Look at me! I look like Dr. Frankenstein's assistant in this thing!"

"Give it a break, man," Lister grunted. "Rimmer's gotta confront his parents, an' we've gotta be there for him when he does. That's what this entire trip's been about!"

Cat snorted.

"The whole idea is crazy," Cat protested. "Goalpost Head ain't even here. An', just look at this guy!" He pointed his thumb at Frank, who was doing his best to keep the majority of his gorilla-esque bulk behind the multi-tiered, elaborately decorated anniversary cake he and Kryten were wheeling toward his parents' table. "He looks like a furry marshmallow that's been melting under a car seat all summer."

Lister had to admit the Cat had a point. It had taken a lot to force that chef's coat around Frank's warped frame back in the kitchen and, now that he was moving, the seams seemed about ready to burst. Buttons strained dangerously across his wide chest, long, hairy wrists stuck way out from too-tight sleeves, and his bulging gut protruded awkwardly over his slacks.

"OK, maybe the coats the kitchen droids gave us are a touch too small," he allowed. "But, don't forget: General Head-Case and Rimmer's brothers are looking for a GELF, not a chef."

"Think of it as camouflage," Kochanski offered. "It's human nature that people see what they expect to see, given a certain context. Case in point: if they see people in white coats wheeling out a fancy cake like this, it follows they must be bakers. Not spies or mad scientists."

"Oh yeah?" the Cat countered, his sharp eyes fixed on the crowd. "Then, if these camouflage disguises are so great, how do you explain those guys?"

"Which guys—?" Kochanski started.

Lister blinked, and swore.

"Smeg – get down!" he cried, Jupiter's filtered light glinting off the barrel of Howard's blaster as he fired.

The Cat ducked low with the speed and grace of a lion in long grass; Kochanski, Kryten and Lister stumbled back…

Frank never saw it coming.

Just a glimpse of polished marble rising up to meet his face as a tall, rather lanky man in a gray uniform made a dramatic, running leap onto the marble dais, using his momentum to shove the GELF aside—

And catch the laser bolt with his own chest.

The man stumbled backwards into the cake as a second bolt followed the first, exploding the elaborate confection into a showering fountain of fondant, filling, and crumbs.

"Ace!" Kochanski cried, her voice chorusing with Lister's and Kryten's as Rimmer's image flickered violently, then began to fade. "Rimmer! Mr. Rimmer, sir!"

*******

"Damn," Howard grunted, wincing at the sight of the anniversary cake's scattered remains.

John slapped the back of his brother's head.

"Idiot," he said. "How could you miss a target that huge?"

"Don't blame me," Howard protested. "That hairy mutant would be out for the count if that lunatic hadn't made his swan-dive directly into my shot. Who was that anyway? And, what the smeg was that flickery sort of light after he fell?"

"I'm heading back to the general to check the surveillance video," John said, shooting a wary glance at the chaos erupting on and around the dais. Everywhere, guests were screaming, camera droids were hovering, and reporters were literally keeping up a running commentary as they jogged backwards to stay in the shot. "I don't intend to get caught in Mother's line of fire for your SNAFU move."

"My—! But-but you ordered—" Howard choked, too incensed by his brother's blame-shifting weaseling to come up with a suitable retort. By the time he could speak again, his older brother had already scarpered.

"Typical," he muttered and arched his nostrils, jogging defeatedly after him.

*******

_Arnold Rimmer, age nearly eight and a half, stood fidgeting at the edge of the marble dais in front of the main gardens, lined up beside his brothers in order from oldest to youngest. Thanks to the torturous sessions on their father's jury-rigged 'stretching' machine, John and Frank were already as tall as adults, with young Howard and Arnold standing more than a foot shorter…though still awkwardly tall for their age._

"Smegging Space Corps with their smegging minimum height requirements," _their diminutive pater could often be heard muttering as he wandered the grounds beneath the dome, squirrel gun in hand._ "Reject me, will they? Utter nonsense! Napoleon would never have stood for it, and neither shall I. Hear that, you fluffy-tailed rodent bastard! Those damn recruiters can take their height requirements and shove them. Now, stand still and take your squirrel-shot like a man!"

_At this moment, the Rimmer boys' small, balding father stood stiffly beside their much taller mother, the two of them facing their four sons like a pair of drill sergeants inspecting a particularly uninspiring batch of raw recruits. Mrs. Rimmer held a slip of paper in her hand that had the rather ominous shape and slightly green tint of an Io House progress report._

_Arnold swallowed hard, already certain it could only be his…_

_"I've summoned you boys here for a reason," their mother said grimly, fixing each boy in turn with a laser beam glare, pin-point focused through her thick-rimmed glasses. "I have something of vital importance to say to you, and although I've been saying it at least twice a week for the past four years, I fear my words have failed to penetrate through a certain bony head."_

_None of the boys dared to groan, though Arnold seemed to shrink slightly in his green school uniform._

_Their mother slapped the paper against her palm, pacing up and down the line as she continued her speech._

_"You boys know quite well that you are counted among the most privileged children in the solar system, never mind the Outer Rim. That privilege implies more than mere material wealth – it means power. Standing. Our voices carry weight few others wield, and we enjoy opportunities open only to the crème of the crème of humanity. But wealth, influence and power are, in themselves, great responsibilities, and your father and I did not engineer you boys to be shirkers."_

_Arnold shrank even further, his thumbs twiddling awkwardly behind his back as she went on._

_"There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything in life: to act, to think, to stand, and yes – even to breathe. You know this. You know that, to be a success, you must always hold yourselves to the highest standards. If you fail to hold up your end, if you fritter away the golden opportunities your father and I have provided for you, you sully not only yourselves, not only your father and me – you sully the Family Name. I've told you often enough that our Family Name is only as good as quality of its members, and I have paid off enormous sums to ensure our gene pool is of the highest quality available. I have spent my entire life carrying you lot to the ziggurat's top. Up ever higher, lickety split. It is now your responsibility to do the same. It is your duty, as a member of the Rimmer Family, to excel. Remember this well, my little Judas..."_

_She stared directly at Arnold, then thwacked his head with the rolled-up progress report so hard the resulting paper cut scarred his jaw._

_"Failure is not an option!"_

*******

The little light bee shimmered and twinkled under mounds of chocolate crumbs and frosting.

"What is that?" Admiral Rimmer demanded, coldly surveying the cake carnage from inside a protective circle of uniformed body guards and soldiers. They'd popped out of the woodwork like whack-a-moles mere moments after the shots were fired and immediately arrested the rather suspicious-looking group of pastry chefs that had been wheeling the cake toward her table. "You – Sergeant! Dispose of that thing at once. It could be another grenade."

"No-no-no!" the Dwarfers chorused, struggling desperately against their electronic bonds.

"You dare contradict me?"

"As long as you need contradictin', yeah," Lister said, smirking slightly at the familiar way her nostrils arched in outrage. Kochanski hissed in exasperation, but Lister easily ignored her. "We keep tellin' ya, there wasn't any grenade! That there's called a light bee. It projects a solid image made of light. That's all!"

"Of course it is," she said. "And you're all time travelers from the future, brought here by a dimension-hopping space ship to lay waste to a major social event that has been literally years in the making." The admiral's voice was as sharp and cold as ice shards off a frozen pond.

"That wasn't what we meant," Kochanski protested. "Please, if you'll just let us go, we can explain—"

"I'm not interested in your explanations," the admiral snarled. "You have absolutely no—"

"Excuse the interruption, Admiral, but you may want to take a look at this," the sergeant said, rising from the cake's ruins with the frosted light bee in his hand. "Honestly, ma'am, it's like nothing I've ever seen before. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was—"

"Alien?" Rimmer's father asked warily.

The sergeant looked uncomfortable.

"Please, dear, I'm handling this," the admiral scolded, shooing her husband back toward the table. "Do go on, Sergeant. What would you say it is?"

"It's future tech," Lister broke in. "Like Kryten, here. That's why you can't place it. That little light bee won't be invented for millions of years yet."

"Actually, sir, we don't know exactly when Legion invented that device," Kryten said. "It could have been only thousands of years from now, or merely hundreds."

"Either way," Lister said, "it belongs to our friend Ace, and we'd like to have it back."

The admiral's eyes flashed darkly behind her glasses.

"Do you think I'm stupid?"

"Not a chance," Lister said, shuffling closer despite the stinging jolts from his energy shackles. "It's just, you don't know how to handle the thing. The way the sergeant is holding it is completely wrong. If you'll just let me—"

He reached out and pressed the light bee's silvery reset button, and the sergeant jumped back in alarm as the little device rose into the air. A blinding flash forced them all to blink and turn their heads. By the time they could see again, Rimmer was standing in the light bee's place, staring around the cake-splatted dais in bewilderment.

"Smeg, it wasn't a dream," he groaned. "I really am back on Io."

"'Fraid so," Lister said, unable to keep from grinning. "But, are you OK, man? No damage from that blaster fire?"

"Diagnostics say the ol' light bee is tickety-boo," Rimmer said, and Lister actually chuckled.

The startled sergeant reached for his blaster, but the admiral waved him down.

"And just exactly what are you supposed to be...Private Rimmer?" she demanded, glaring down her nose at the name printed on his uniform.

Not long ago, a glare like that would have had the power to send Rimmer into fits of self-loathing fury from eighty paces away. But standing on that dais, seeing the ruined cake, his friends and his mutated brother shackled and surrounded by soldiers and guards…he just wasn't feeling it. Instead of shrinking in intimidation, he found himself staring straight back at her, his expression completely blank.

Slowly, in one smooth, simultaneous motion, he came to attention and raised his arm, circling his wrist several times in front of the confused admiral before bringing it back toward his forehead for a full Rimmer salute.

Only when the salute threatened to go on forever did she realize she was supposed to return it.

"That's Ace Rimmer, ma'am," he said, finishing the salute and snapping his arm back to his side. "Formerly Second Technician Arnold J. Rimmer of the JMC mining vessel Red Dwarf. Current assignment: Commander of the Space Corps DJ prototype Wildfire. Current status: Hologram."

He smiled a very dry little smile as he watched her expression change from anger and befuddlement to something more like horrified nausea.

"No..." she whispered. "But...you can't be—"

"Actually, I can," he said. "Three million years, I've been avoiding this place. But, your little Judas has finally returned to the old home dome."

He smirked.

"Happy anniversary, Mother."

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Time: The GELF confrontation! Stay Tuned, and thank you so much for your reviews! Your comments and opinions are deeply appreciated! :D


	19. Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Six Space Corps patrol ships skid smoothly into Jupiter's gravity well, riding the line with the effortless skill of stock footage surfers spliced into a 1960s beach flick.

Gravimetric interference effectively shielded their course from Outer Rim patrol units and satellite scanners as they moved in tandem, the sleek vessels maintaining a dangerously high speed until Io's pock-marked face hoved into view.

The lead ship dipped its wing then pulled out of their close formation, the other five branching off to surround the volcanic moon. Like buffeting gusts of wind, the ships wove in and out of delineated space traffic lanes, zipping past transport and delivery shuttles, taking out automatic traffic buoys and satellite transmitters with their laser cannons; their looping paths finally rejoining to circle over one particular Family Dome…

*******

General Metzeler watched the man in the surveillance video disappear in a flickering flash. She watched it again, then watched it at half speed. At quarter speed.

She saw Howard's laser bolt hit, saw the crackle of energy wrap around the man's torso as he flailed his arms… The man seemed to fade out and in, becoming as translucent as a ghost, before slamming into the elaborate show cake the other intruders had been wheeling toward the main table.

Another crackling flash, and he seemed to vanish completely.

"Impossible," she muttered, and played the video again, pausing the man in mid-flail.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say he was a hologram. Or, some sort of projection," John said, looking over her shoulder. "But, there are no self-projecting holograms. And no hologram could smash a cake, or touch things the way he does."

"Agreed," Metzeler said. "So, what the hell is he?"

"He said his name is Ace," Howard said. "But, look at the tags there, on his uniform."

"'Rimmer'," John read. "'Second Technician.' Yet, we know there is no Second Tech Rimmer currently serving in the Space Corps. It has to be a front, like the general said. Some kind of disguise to get this false Rimmer and his Nehbee friends through our door."

"But, why would a terrorist pose as a mere Second Tech?" Howard asked. "I mean, there are service droids on mining ships that pull more weight."

"Why would a mutant subversive claim to be our brother Frank?" John retorted. "It's all misdirection with these people. It's to their advantage to keep us off balance. Isn't that right, General," he deferred.

"Quite right, Captain," she said, fixing her sharp eyes on Howard. "And I suggest you stop asking questions, Lieutenant Rimmer. We're dealing with classified intelligence, and there's a horde of press outside. So, keep your thoughts to yourself and follow the orders you're given. Understood?"

"Understood, sir," Howard said, snapping to quick attention.

John shot his brother a smug look and Howard turned away, only to catch an odd flash of movement on one of the surveillance screens.

"Um… I…uh…"

"What is it now, Lieutenant?"

"Excuse me, General. My apologies," he said, "but, if I might bring your attention to that outside monitor, there…"

He pointed to a small group of blinking blips circling on the security console screen.

"Those vessels seem to be homing in on our dome," John observed. "It couldn't more guests, could it? Not this late in the day."

"They read as Space Corps patrol ships," Howard said, tapping a few buttons to bring the blips under closer scrutiny. "With your permission, General, should I send a standard hail?"

Metzeler grunted in exasperation, rising from the small room's lone swively chair to glare at the red, green and black display.

"Damn," she muttered. "How the hell did they get here so fast?"

"You recognize them, General?" John asked.

"It has to be those ingrate miners," she said. "Mars Base was supposed to be handling this, but I guess these ships managed to slip past their satellite scanners."

She hefted a laser blaster from the stack by the wall and gestured for John and Howard to do the same.

"All right, lads," she said, checking the charge. "Tell your folks: anniversary's over. It's time to prepare for a different sort of party."

To Be Continued...


	20. Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

"March, you twonks! I said: MARCH! That means move your smeggin' legs!" the stocky sergeant roared, giving Lister's back a sharp prod with his blaster rifle. "Hut-two, hut-two, hut-two, hut-two…!"

"Hey, watch where you stick that thing," Lister snarked, obstinately slowing his pace as he and his companions were roughly quick-marched across the dais, through an elaborate set of French windows, into a rather striking octagonal ballroom with mirrored walls. He turned to face the little clot of soldiers Admiral Rimmer had dispatched to corral the group for questioning, jogging backwards a few steps as he gestured toward his electronic shackles with his chin.

"Go easy, will ya?" he said. "It's not like we can do much escapin' with these things jabbin' us with electric jolts any time we try to raise our arms or use our hands."

The sergeant curled his lip.

"You lot are to stay right here in this room," he snarled. "An' don't you twonks try any funny business. This room's under video surveillance, and my people will be stationed outside every door and window. One false move, and your butts are—"

"Toast, yeah?" Lister finished for him.

The sergeant glared.

"I knew it!" Lister crowed, a cheeky smile spreading across his face. "It's always the same with you shouty pushy types. Is it, like, some class you guys take? How to spout corny cliches at your captives?"

"Lister," Kochanski admonished.

The sergeant glared again and gestured for his people to follow him out of the room.

"You've been warned," he fired as a parting shot before slamming the doors behind him and taking up a stiff, guarding position on the dais just outside.

"Oooh…!" Lister pretended to shudder.

Kochanski rolled her eyes.

"So, what now?" she asked, turning to face the rest of the group. "Does anyone have a plan? Or do we stand here like a bunch of lemons and wait for the authorities to come and cart us away as terrorists?"

All eyes turned to Ace except the Cat's, which seemed permanently glued to his own preening reflection in the ballroom's mirrored walls.

"No one will be carting anybody anywhere," Rimmer told them. "Not yet, anyway. Not until Mother dearest has dropped in to have her say."

Lister snorted.

"You mean all that red-faced screamin' when she ordered those soldiers to march us in here wasn't her havin' her say?"

Rimmer smirked, just slightly, then turned away to face the windows, his expression distant and distracted.

There was something going on inside him, something he couldn't quite name. He'd been feeling odd since confronting his mother on the dais, but his lightbee's diagnostics insisted it wasn't a result of the electronic overload. The little device was working perfectly, his personality program showed no anomalies.

But then, where were his doubts, the familiar anxieties that kept him focused - that monitored and judged his every move and thought? Where was his self-hating rage, his well-worn resentment and pain?

Why didn't he feel afraid?

"They were aiming at me," Frank slurred, glumly licking the slobber from his oversized teeth.

"I'm sorry, sir, I didn't quite catch that," Kryten said, shuffling a little closer to the morose mutant.

"My brothers," Frank said. "My own brothers… They bought Metzeler's story, hook, line and trawler, and then they tried to shoot me. Not that I really blame them. If our places were reversed, I'd probably have tried to shoot them."

Lister shared a look with Kochanski.

Frank clenched his shackled fists.

"I can't believe that this is happening to me!" he roared. "When I woke up this morning, I was a man. An officer with his whole career ahead of him! Now, my mother doesn't know me, my brothers believe I'm some mutant terrorist. I'd probably be lying dead right now if 'Ace,' here, hadn't snagged the laser bolt that should have been mine..."

"You're welcome," Rimmer said.

"That wasn't a thank you," Frank retorted bitterly. "You think I want to live my life like this - looking like a reject from the Planet of the Apes, after a nuclear blast!" He snorted in disgust. "Right. Thanks but no thanks, 'little brother'."

Rimmer quirked an eyebrow, but didn't respond. He simply regarded his brother, eyes dark and expression thoughtful.

Lister looked at him curiously, not quite sure what to make of this strange attitude. He stepped closer but, before he could say anything, Kryten spoke up.

"Mr. Frank, sir," the mechanoid said, "if you would allow me to indulge my curiosity chip for a moment…"

"What do you want to know?" the mutant muttered.

"Well, sir, by all accounts, before your…shall we say…your 'transformation,' you were a successful, highly respected, upwardly mobile officer with a lovely wife and two charming children. My question, therefore, is as follows: What happened? What could possibly have convinced a man like you submit to a course of experimental injections with the potential to alter your genetic make-up? Were you kept ignorant of the possible side effects, like the unfortunate miners we've heard about, or were you just plain stupid?"

Frank let out an odd, strangled little chuckle and turned his gaze to the high, domed ceiling, skillfully frescoed with planetarium-worthy images of the solar system as seen from Jupiter.

"He doesn't understand…" he rumbled, low in his throat. "I doubt any of you do…that any of you could…"

"It was a fast-track to command," Rimmer stated flatly. "A way to reach those captain's bars."

"Yes…"

The mutant spoke hoarsely, a rising swell of bitterness threatening to overwhelm him.

"So, you know. Of course, you would know…"

Frank closed his eyes and shuddered, a terrible grimace twisting his already warped features.

"I would have done anything for that promotion," he admitted, the confession tearing from him like shrapnel being ripped from an open wound. "All my life, I've been caught in the middle. Always having to prove myself, to find ways to force Mother and Father to notice my achievements… John made captain at twenty-five. Howard - seventeen year old Howard - is already a junior grade lieutenant! But me…"

Lister frowned.

"Seventeen?" He glanced at Rimmer. "But, didn't you say that, in this time period, you were seventeen? How can you and your brother both be the same age?"

"Not now, Lister," Rimmer said, but Lister kept right on the same train of thought.

"Unless you were twins... But, you never told me you had a twin—"

"It's not like that," Rimmer snapped. "Not exactly. But, now is not the time for this."

He gestured to Frank, and Lister raised his hands and backed away.

"Right, right. Later, then."

Rimmer sighed through his teeth, but Frank was too involved in his own pain to take much notice of their brief exchange. He sniffled hard and swallowed, his nose running into his matted fur.

"Mother has never approved of anything I've done," he croaked. "Every choice I've made has seemed to backfire. I had the wrong wife, the wrong children… There I was, hurtling towards thirty, and my career was at a total standstill. Then Mother bought herself that position in the admiralty and left me languishing in some mid-level office down in Special Services, and I thought I was finished for sure. Dreary mundanity was to be my fate, and I had to learn to live with it.

"Then, this Project came up… And, Mother came to me. She didn't turn to Howard or John. She chose me, and I knew… I knew she'd offered it to me as chance to prove myself. To step out from behind John's shadow. To stand with the winners, and finally claim my place at the Captains' Table.

"That's why I had to accept," he finished quietly. "No matter the cost…"

"Extraordinary," Kryten commented, rather clinically.

Kochanski shook her head rather pityingly.

Lister cringed back with a wince.

"Yeesh…" He grimaced. "God, Rimmer, he sounds just like you!"

Rimmer snorted, regarding his brother with the slightest smirk on his otherwise somber face.

"So he does."

Rimmer set his jaw and moved toward the French windows, peering out at the activity on the dais. A trio of service droids were efficiently clearing sticky cake lumps from the polished marble. Just beyond, he could hear his mother's distant, muffled tones, employing her calmest, most patronizing voice to smooth a few loads of hastily sculpted BS over the reporters and anxious guests.

He ran his eyes over the crowd until, out by the garden hedge, well behind the hovering mikes and camera droids, he spotted Janine's pale face.

Her eyes were wide with worry, her clasped hands pressed to her mouth, her two children dashing around and under the abandoned tables and chairs like a pair of wild raccoons tussling over an apple.

Frank followed his gaze, shuffling slowly forward as if drawn by some invisible magnetic force.

Rimmer glanced at him, then back to Janine, noting that although there was no way she could actually see Frank from where she was standing - let alone recognize him - her gaze was fixed in his direction…and her husband's eyes were locked on hers.

Ace's thin lips turned softly upwards and he lifted his chin in a slight nod.

"It all must seem pretty hollow about now," he commented, keeping his gaze on Frank's family. "The promises of promotion, of positions of command and respect. There's something missing, isn't there. Some key ingredient you can only truly recognize when its gone. I know..."

He lowered his eyes, his lips tightening against the pang of bittersweet memories.

"There was a ship once," he said. "The Enlightenment. It seemed a paradise to me. Everything I had ever dreamed and more was there waiting if only I could find a way to secure a place on that ship. I would have done anything, risked anything, to become a part of that crew. And, in the end, I did just that. I won the Enlightenment but, in the process, I lost my Nirvana. Being an officer there meant nothing to me after that."

Lister regarded him with deep curiosity.

"Rimmer...?"

"What the hell are you blathering about," Frank snarled.

Rimmer straightened, his prominent Adam's apple bobbing slightly as he turned to face down his brother.

"Our family is broken, Frank," he said. "You know it as well as I do. Here, in this dome, we were taught to value authority and power above all things. Climbing the ziggurat of command was the only achievement worth achieving. It was the sole definition of a successful career - a worthwhile life. Selfish machinations, blackmail, backstabbing betrayals, these were framed as basic methods to get ahead, to force your way to the next step, the next rung of the ladder. Any other people you met along the way were to be viewed either as tools or as obstacles to ram out of your path. Why? Because, somehow, we were innately better, more deserving, more privileged than the rest of the sad, sorry losers out there. That's why, when things went wrong, it could never be a result of our faults, our failings, our poor decisions. No, the blame had to lie somewhere else. With fate. With a conspiracy. With someone we could scapegoat. A colleague, perhaps, or a friend."

Rimmer frowned.

"Your wife."

Frank snarled, and Rimmer knew he'd struck a tender nerve.

"This is what we were told to think," he said. "It's what I always believed."

He fixed Frank's bitter, angry eyes with his firm, direct gaze.

"I learned that I was wrong," he said. "There is more to winning than ruthless, self-centered ambition. And, I think, Frank…you're standing at the cusp of learning that too."

To Be Continued…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References include - Red Dwarf: Holoship.
> 
> Until next time, thanks so much for reading! Please Review! :D


	21. Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Adam Larkin was, in general, a rather laid back sort. He had a good job piloting a supply freighter between mining camps and the colony ships, a comfy couch, and season passes to the Miners' Guild Zero-G Football Stadium: pre-season, home games and practices. He even had a girlfriend.

Well, a friend who was a girl.

A very close friend who spent her days mining ore and her nights sharing her dreams with him over the freighter's clapped out old vid-speaker.

A woman so beautiful, her grubby uniform and dinged-up mining helmet only enhanced her smiling eyes. Even with his freighter's crap reception and cramped, fuzzy screen, her eyes shimmered like topaz under torchlight, her teeth were like gleaming quartz, her skin seemed smoother than polished obsidian, and her hair…

All right. Fair to say, the two of them were more than friends.

Amy Cunningham was the reason laid-back Adam had started working overtime. Signing up for longer pick-up and delivery runs, volunteering for riskier assignments.

Which, in turn, was why he'd finally accepted the vitamin regime the Space Corps had been offering colony ship residents free of charge. A regime of health-and-energy-boosting pills and injections nearly all the sun-starved miners and civilian pilots he knew had already been taking for months.

All so he could pile up enough savings to take Amy on her dream trip to Earth. To see a place so rich with fresh water that the precious stuff literally poured over cliff sides in roaring torrents. To taste a fruit that had never been freeze-dried. Soft and luscious and dripping with juice…

He even had his eye on a ring. Carved from a single piece of real Earth rosewood, with a glistening bead of purest water preserved in a hollowed-out diamond.

Nothing made Adam happier on his long delivery flights than imagining her face when he presented her with that ring…anticipating her calls every evening…seeing her face, hearing the warm smile in her voice…

And then, without warning, her vid-calls stopped.

It wasn't like she hadn't had time to make the calls, or was too busy to pick up. With their odd hours and rough schedules, that happened often enough on both their ends. They just made up the chat time when they could.

This was different. Her comm unit had gone completely dead. Her entire social media presence…

Just…gone.

After five days of silence, Adam broke his route and made a bee-line for the last outpost she'd been assigned to.

The camp stood abandoned, the mining equipment eerily still. All the miners' stuff was still there: rumpled cots and magazines, unwashed mugs and plates...

But, no people.

No one at all...

For weeks, Adam scoured the news stations, prodded the Miners' Guild, begging for any information…her status…her whereabouts… Had there been an explosion? A cave-in?

The more his questions were ignored or rebuffed, the deeper and more wide-ranging he took his search, greasing the way with the dollar-pounds he'd so carefully stowed until a vague tip brought him to an aging, remarkably buxom, bartender serving out drinks on Colony Ship 6. For a few hundred, cash, she steered Adam toward a young Space Corps scout pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Grant Grimmel who, for the past fortnight or so, seemed to have set up permanent camp at the back of her bar.

The pilot seemed dead-set on drinking himself into oblivion, but laid-back Adam could be as patient and persistent as an encroaching glacier when the mood took him. Nothing could turn him from his quest for answers.

And in the end, the troubled officer cracked wide open.

The truth about the vitamin regime came gushing out of him, along with a several pints of drunken tears. Keeping the Space Corps' secret had been tearing the young man's soul to tatters, and breaking his oath to his superiors nearly broke him as well.

But, for all the man's alcohol-soured sobbing, Adam could tell that, in Grant, he had gained an ally. As Grant spoke, Adam saw a fiercely burning anger rise in his eyes. A fire he knew the young officer saw mirrored in his own.

Grant told him of a small, secret branch of the Space Corps. A privately funded offshoot of Special Services R&D that had targeted the Kuiper Belt mining colonies under false pretenses. Used them as guinea pigs to test their Super Soldier serum.

The testing had started months ago, he said, under the guise of a health-boosting vitamin regimen.

And now, colonists were changing. Their physical bodies warping, stretching, their genetic codes corrupted by a distant, uncaring hierarchy of privileged, Outer Rim investors who openly portrayed the miners, not as the resourceful pioneers they were, but as sub-human Morlocks. Test animals to be exploited then discarded with no regard for their humanity or outward-moving culture.

The young officer had seen it happen, witnessed the miners' agonized screams as their bones and muscles lengthened, their skulls distorted, their bodies sprouted thick mats of wiry fur…

It had happened to Amy, Grant said, and it would happen to Adam. The genetic damage had already been done. He warned that, within weeks, Adam would start feeling sharp pains in his joints, his muscles. In less than a month, he'd know firsthand the agony of the violent mutation ripping its way through mining camps and colony ships all across the Kuiper Belt...sending its shamed and angry victims into hiding...

There was nothing he could do, Grant said, no agency he could turn to. The general in charge of the program, Pauline Metzeler, had already started a spin campaign designed to place all blame on the miners themselves, charging radiation exposure, harsh living conditions, and loose immorality for the terrible mutations now afflicting them. And, she was backed in her efforts by the Genetically Engineered Super Soldier Project's chief investor, Admiral Rimmer, a long-outspoken eugenics advocate who had genetically engineered her four children…all of whom now served in the Space Corps.

To boil the whole thing down, Grant said, the GESS Project had failed, the duped colonists were now thoroughly screwed, and the high-ranking officials who had so maliciously defrauded and exploited them stood poised to walk away without so much as a fleck of dust on their ten-thousand dollar-pound suits.

All of which left Adam helpless. Isolated. Voiceless in the face of their protective vortex of money and power, slander and lies.

Unless...

To Be Continued...


	22. Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

The thing about Io…

The unique, special, immensely dangerous thing about Io…

The thing about Io is…

It's a volcanic moon.

And, not just a volcanic moon.

It's a volcanic moon in close proximity to, and which carries on a very potent relationship with, the gas giant Jupiter.

To own a dome on Io - to live there and raise a family…

It was a symbol of conquest. Human resilience set against the rawest forces of Nature.

To live on Io was to prove you could overcome anything.

…as long as you possessed the funds.

Engineers and architects initially consulted to tame this violent moon for colonization had concluded it couldn't be done. At least, not so the planetoid could be fit for long-term human habitation. Mobile mining camps, perhaps. But, wealthy homesteaders…?

Not the best idea.

This was because the stormy giant, Jupiter, held Io in its thrall. The push and pull of its powerful forces produced a searing heat in Io's belly; the pressure rising, building, until molten rock exploded through the moon's frozen sulfur dioxide surface. Flowing lava vaporized the toxic ice on contact, hissing and bubbling as deadly gasses escaped into the atmosphere - a full ton spewing into Jupiter's orbit every second, supercharging particles trapped in deadly radiation belts within the giant's magnetosphere.

Lethal radiation engulfed the massive planet, Jupiter basked in the glow of fantastical auras…

Until Space Corps scientists, funded primarily by Earth taxes, developed an energy shield designed to interfere with and, to some extent, block Jupiter's most puissant forces. Powered by a combination of Io's geothermal energy and radiation from Jupiter itself, their force shield calmed Io's deadliest volcanoes, creating a balance just stable enough to allow the construction of a small, closely clustered network of radiation-resistant domes - greenish blisters of Earth-type atmosphere and living soil set in an uneven semicircle atop the toxic terrain. Elite homes, schools, shopping centers…

There, they gleamed against the poison ice: a haughty smirk aimed directly at Jupiter's great red eye.

Adam Larkin glared down from the captain's chair of his shanghaied Space Corps scout ship and smirked right back.

"Fire," he ordered.

*******

The octagonal ballroom rattled and shook. One of the three angled mirrors bearing Cat's preening reflection cracked, and the pain of it made him cry out.

"Steady on, old chum," Rimmer said, and narrowed his eyes. "My guess is that was a warning shot."

"Warning shot?" Lister exclaimed, wheeling his arms. Kochanski risked the shocks from her electronic shackles to help steady him on his feet. "You mean, someone's firin' at us?"

"Look, sirs!" Kryten said, staring up at the elaborate chandelier. "The lights - they're flickering. I think—"

An odd, static-electric wave washed over the group, accompanied by a low, hum-like sigh. The lights died, their shackles opened and fell to the floor. From outside, they could hear the startled cries of reporters as their expensive camera drones dropped from the sky…

"The power…" Rimmer said, his voice almost a whisper. "The power is out…"

Kochanski regarded him.

"Is that a problem?" she asked.

"It could be," he said. "It certainly could be. Without power, the dome's oxygen generators won't be working. Worse, if all the domes have lost power, the energy shield that blocks the forces of Jupiter could falter. Even on back-ups, we may only have a few hours before lethal radiation—"

"Hey guys!" the Cat called, pointing to the cracked mirror. "Look over here!"

The mirror was angled so the dais beyond the French windows was visible, as well as the pale, greenish curve of the inner dome.

The group craned their necks, straining to peer past the Cat's reflection, as well as their own, until they could see what he'd been pointing at.

An enormous GELF face had been projected against the side of the dome.

Almost as one, the group turned and hurried to the window for a clearer view, the Cat trailing reluctantly behind.

"Gah, yuck!" Cat winced. "Just look at that matted fur, those crooked fangs, those beady little eyes…!" He looked Frank up and down. "That dude looks just like you, man!"

"Good God," Frank gasped. "But…but how…?"

"Remember, old boy, you're not the only one Mother and that general duped with that serum," Rimmer said. "Looks like the real crashers have finally joined the party. And, judging from the hospitality this family's shown so far, I'd say it's up to us to make sure they get a proper welcome."

*******

The GELF's glaring face loomed over the manicured gardens, making the admiral's important guests all twitchy and uncomfortable. Reporters everywhere crouched over their fallen camera droids, at loose ends without instant access to their network liaisons.

"What is that hideous thing?" the guests muttered and whispered, shooting haughty, disapproving glances at the dais, where Admiral Rimmer and General Metzeler seemed to be having an argument.

"Not another tiresome prank..."

"Have you ever seen a more ridiculous looking costume?"

"You don't think it could be alien, do you?"

"More likely a vid."

"Why doesn't someone change the bloody channel?"

"Will we be having cake after all, then?"

The irritated muttering grew and swelled - until the mutant's image spoke, and all other voices went uncomfortably silent.

"I am Adam Larkin," the furry GELF slurred through his obstructive fangs, "captain of the independent supply freighter, Icefall. I appear to you today, like this, to deliver a message. The GESS Project you have funded is a dangerous lie. The Project's champions, Admiral Rimmer and General Metzeler, have willfully and knowingly defrauded my people into playing the guinea pigs for their irresponsible genetic experiment. This warped form...this mutated face you now see is the result. Many hundreds of my people have suffered this terrible transformation. Dedicated, hardworking families who were given no choice, no honest facts about the so-called vitamin regime these supposedly respected officers were hawking to our schools, our hospitals! They lied to us, and they have lied to all of you. Their crimes will not be tolerated. Deliver these criminals to us, and we will see to it that justice is fairly and properly served to all who have been complicit in this assault on our genetic future. Refuse, and we will destroy your energy shield and leave you to weather the force of Jupiter's wrath. Consider carefully which would you rather face: human justice, or Nature's mercy? You have ten minutes to decide."

The GELF's image faded in a haze of static, and the admiral's guests burst into panic.

Rimmer sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Fan-smegging-tastic," he groaned.

"We could just leave her to it," Lister said, watching him closely. "Scarper back to Starbug an' the Wildfire and head somewhere else."

"Judging from Mr. Frank's experience, sir, and the shady way the admiral, General Metzeler, and your other two brothers attempted to scapegoat all of us, I think we can trust those GELFs have a legitimate grievance," Kryten added.

Frank growled low in his throat, but didn't protest.

Rimmer shook his head.

"No," he said. "You make a fair point, Kryten, but I can't let this ultimatum stand. This situation needs diffusing, if not for Mother's sake, then for theirs - those angry miners whose case will only be harmed if they carry out this threat. I'm heading up to face those GELFs. Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for—"

"No, Ace, you can't," Kochanski broke in. "Not alone. The Wildfire has no weapons!"

"As a wise woman from Dimension 85543229 once told me - and, with apologies to present company," he said with a glance at Frank, "'There's more than one way to skin a GELF.'"

"Yeah," Lister said, crossing his arms, "unless the GELF skins you first. I'm with Krissie. It's all or none on this one."

"You're all agreed?" Rimmer said, casting his gaze from one determined face to the other.

"We are, sir."

"You bet, H-Face."

"Frank?" he asked, looking into his brother's dark eyes.

Frank nodded slowly, and placed a hairy hand on Rimmer's shoulder.

"I'm with you," he said. "Ace."

Rimmer's expression twitched...just for a fraction of a moment...and he swallowed hard.

"Thank you," he said, and strode across the ballroom floor, leading the group through an unmarked, mirrored door to the servant's corridor. "Come on, quickly," he said. "I'll tell you my plan once we're in orbit."

To Be Continued...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Until next time! Thanks so much for reading! Your reviews are always welcome! :D


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